Drunken Adventures
by willwrite4fics
Summary: BeachHead gets sent to town to retrieve some drunk Joes. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
1. Chapter 1

Something different. How much trouble can a guy who is always in control get into, when he loses that control?

* * * *

The Pit was quiet. It should be quiet, it was extremely late at night, and Flint was happily writing out a very short report that nothing of note was happening. The best kind of night. No alarms, no issues, no pranking, no problems. He glanced at the sign-in sheet from the front gate and frowned. Several Joes and greenshirts were still off base. They had a eleven p.m. curfew to be back. He glanced at the clock. Ten-forty-two.

Looking down the list of names, he called the gate guards to double-check and found most of them were still not back.

Breaker looked over his shoulder at the warrant officer. "Flint.. they're out celebrating. Remember? Clutch's sister just had that baby.. so he invited everyone out for a few beers?" The communications specialist blew a large pink bubble with his gum and popped it loudly. "They might have just lost track of time. I know Clutch was mighty proud that he'll be an uncle. And Shipwreck went with them.. "

Flint groaned. "Great. The sailor and Clutch both out on the town with a good excuse to get drunk and enough other guys to cause mayhem. Just what we need." He ran his eyes over the list. Clutch, RockNRoll, Shipwreck, Dusty, Greenshirts Mouth and Buyour, Alpine, Bazooka and Footloose were listed as off-base. He looked up at the clock again. "Well.. if they're not back on base in the next fourteen minutes, they're gonna be AWOL."

Breaker sighed and ran a quick check of the local police scanners and alerts. "Nothing showing on the PD alerts. No mass call for cops anywhere. Maybe they're just cutting it really close."

Flint grumbled but went to check the reports from the fences, guardposts and security systems. Everything came back green and he looked at the clock again. They had three minutes to arrive now. Another call to the front gate netted him nothing.

Breaker suddenly clicked a switch. "Incoming call." He punched a code in to scramble the line. "Breaker here, communications center."

The voice on the line was slurred but recognizable as Shipwreck. "Heeeey Breaker old pal. We're ... we need.. uhh.. " His voice got loud and they could hear loud background noise. "What was it I needed to ask him? Hey! HEY!! GUYSSS!? What was I askin' Breaker??" There was a pause and Flint frowned and stepped over to wait. "Stop putting peanuts on Footloose!! Oh yeah! Breaker.. dude.. you gotta send someone out here to get us. Cause we're about to bust curfew.. and Flint'll get ALLLLL outa joint over it if we ain't on base at eleven!"

Flint leaned over. "Flint IS 'outa joint'. It's two minutes to curfew! You better get your sorry butts back on base RIGHT NOW!"

It was very quiet and then Shipwreck sighed. "We can't come back to base.. we're all drunk! We gotta have a driver, but we can't be the drivers, on account of we're ALL drunk! We designatededed a driver.. but it was confusing.. so everyone got drunk on accident.. so now we wanna be on base.. honest Flint!! We WANNA be on base! But.. but.. we CAN'T drive! On account of we're all really really drunk! Yeah.. drunk.. cause we all drank a lot of alhoocoocoo.. alcooocoo.. alllhoohoo... beer."

Flint gritted his teeth. "Alright. You're all drunk and you don't have a driver. You idiots. Which bar are you at?" He got the name and Breaker pulled up the address and directions. "I'm sending someone out now with a truck. You guys better be there when they get there, and when you get back here, you're all in BIG trouble." He listened to some giggling in the background.

Shipwreck came back, whispering loudly. "Shh.. shhh.. SHUT UP!!! Guys.. he's gonna hear you! Shush it up!! Hey I told you!! No peanuts on Footloose.. well.. throw something else at him! NOT A GLASS!! You moron!!!" He began to talk in a slow exaggeratedly calm voice into the phone. "Okay Flint. We're not causin' no trouble, just didn't want to drive drunk, safety first and all that, you know!"

"Just stay there." Flint clicked the connection closed. "Good lord. Who am I supposed to send out for the idiots?" He glanced over the board of on-base Joes. "I should send BeachHead out to get them. That'd teach them to get drunk and call in here."

Breaker popped another bubble. "Why not? He's ranked higher than they are, and he's loud enough to get them all rounded up. He's on base."

Flint grimaced. "He's gonna have been in bed for hours. Be grumpy as heck to have to get up.. and.. go off base to.. heh heh.. get them. Yeah.. I think Beach is the obvious choice. He's fourth in command... he should go retrieve these troublemakers." The warrant officer turned to one of the greenshirts on duty. "Go wake up BeachHead.. have him take one of the deuce-and-a-half trucks to pick up this lot of troublemakers. Here's the directions and bar address."

The poor Greenshirt looked like he was a lamb going to a particularly messy painful slaughter. Flint wondered idly to himself if the poor guy would end up with broken arms from having to wake up the sergeant major. BeachHead was notorious for being out of sorts when he had to get up from his sleep for anything but an emergency involving shooting people. He tended to want to shoot people anyway.. and if there wasn't any enemy around.. well..

As he half expected, his communicator chimed at him. He'd swear that every time it was BeachHead, the chime managed to sound angry. "Flint here."

"What the hell is goin' on?" Yes.. the greenshirt was probably lying in a puddle somewhere.

"Need you to go pick up a group at that address on the paper the greenie should have given you." Flint smiled to himself. "Is there an issue, Sergeant major?" His voice was a self-satisfied purr.

"No sir. I'll leave right away." Each word sounded like it had been bitten off and thrown through the comm unit. Flint savored the moment. It wasn't all that often that he got to annoy BeachHead so much. Waking him up out of his sleep, to send him driving off to town, to retrieve a load of drunks.. that was three for three. To top it off, it was perfectly in order for BeachHead to be the one going to retrieve the Joes. Especially because two of his greenshirts were part of the group. Of course, the PT tomorrow would be a horror show.. but occasionally it was worth it. He almost wished he'd made the Ranger come up to the command center in person to get the orders. Then he'd have gotten to see his face.

The greenshirt returned, albeit a bit rumpled up. "Sergeant major BeachHead said to let you know he's leaving now."

Flint grinned. "Yeah? What did he really say?"

The young man flinched and sat down into his chair to take over his station. "I'd really prefer not to repeat it, sir."

"I'll bet."

* * * *

BeachHead scowled as he downshifted to make it up a steep bit of road. The old deuce-and-a-half grumbled and growled as it made the top of the hill. He glanced at his watch and swore. It was nearly midnight, and here he was out of bed to go retrieve drunks. Going into town meant he wore his usual green sweater and lightweight tactical vest, with a minimum of open-carry weapons. One pistol on his hip.. well.. and no less than two hide-aways plus knives.. would have to do.

Holding up the page of directions, he squinted and then had to dig out his small flashlight and hold it in his teeth to read the rumpled paper. The steering wheel tried to drag out of his hands as he took a sharp curve a bit too fast for the huge transport truck and he swore again, dropping the flashlight and paper.

"Son-of-a... dang stupid Flint sending me out here.." He groped around in the floorboards and found his flashlight. The paper eluded him until he used the light to find it. "Dang stupid drunks.. wait till tomorrow morning.. we'll see who's grumpy in the danged morning."

When he pulled in, he parked at the outside edge of the parking lot, the only area that had space for him to back out with the truck. Flint should be glad he was qualified to drive nearly anything out there. Not everyone was allowed to drive transport trucks. After double-checking the address, he sighed and slammed the truck's emergency brakes on as hard as he could, hoping the stupid thing didn't slip and roll into a ditch or something. It'd been known to happen with some of the older trucks, and he sure wasn't going to be calling the base to report he'd put the truck into a ditch.

He pulled off his balaclava before he entered the bar, having learned that lesson early on. Masked robbers and masked sergeant majors looked a lot alike to shotgun wielding bartenders. The inside of the bar was loud and bright and annoying. The missing Joe's were gathered in one end of the bar, singing loudly, and off-key. He strode over, scowling at them. "ALRIGHT!! Form up, you buncha lousy maggots! Time to go back to base."

Dusty staggered over and draped an arm over him instead. "BEACH!!! DUDE!! You're HERE! That's great!! Someone get old Beachie-Beach a big tall cold beer! He wants a beer too!"

"I don't want a beer. I want to be sleeping. BUT instead.. I'm here to drag your sorry butts back to base. Buncha lowlifes." He shrugged off the arm and dragged the trooper to the rest of the group by a tight grip on his shirt.

Dusty shook his head, allowing the sergeant major to manhandle him into place without protest. "LowLight ain't here... he's on base."

"I SAID lowlifes.. not LowLight.. idiot." He barked at the rest of the group. "Ya'll form up over here!! NOW!!" The group came to stand in a small cluster and he counted heads. "Where the hell is Bazooka and Alpine? If I gotta go hunt those two down.. I swear.."

Clutch belched loudly. "Whhooooo.. that was rancid. Nooo.. Bazooka is bein' sick in the bathroom.. Alpine is making sure that he don't pass out and drown in a toilet."

"Awww gawd.. that's jus' great." He went to check and found Alpine standing over the miserable infantryman. "Ya'll get it gear.. we're going back to base."

Bazooka groaned and tilted his head up to look at him. "I drank too many beers. Stomach can't hold 'em all now."

Alpine blinked at him. "Well.. we can do that sarge.. but he's gonna barf all the way to base.. if you just give us a few minutes here.. he can finish throwing up. Not that I care either way, except as his buddy, I know he'll barf on me first."

Beach twitched as Bazooka began loudly retching again. "Alright.. alright.. just a few minutes though.. " He went back to the little group and stood there with his hands on his hips. "Dang it.. where's Footloose?" A visual search found him coming back from the bar with a glass. "What are ya doin? Ya don't need no more beer! Get over here!"

Footloose grinned happily. "NO NO!!!! I GOT THIS FOR YOU!!" Beach winced away from the shouting.

Dusty put a finger to his lips. "Inside voice Footloose... inside voice.. don't yell at Beachie-Beach.. he'll get ALLLL kinds of grumpy at us."

Shipwreck snickered suddenly. "Awww.. Beach is a good guy.. he'll take us back to base!! I knew Breaker would help us out, and now we won't be bustin' curfew!"

BeachHead snarled at the men. "Ya'll are all in deep trouble already. Footloose.. take that drink back ta the bar! I'm drivin', and I'm on duty.. I ain't about to go sucking down some two-bit beer in a shoddy bar like here."

Dusty looked around suddenly. "Two-Bits is here? Where!? I'll buy him a beer!"

The Ranger put a hand over his eyes. "Gawd I hate drunks. Two-Bits ain't here Dusty. Shut it, and sit down. No one go anywhere!"

Footloose was trying to hand him the glass. "No no no no.. no no.. it's not beer! I got you your FAVORITE DRINK BEACHHEAD!!! It's cold tea with lots of sh-sh-sh-sugar.. got it for ya.. not beer. Beach WOULDN'T DRINK A BUNCHA BEER!!!" The faulty volume control on the trooper made BeachHead wince and he took the glass from him to shut him up.

He pointed to the corner of the bar. "Alright.. shhh.. hush that shoutin' up. Everyone over there." He lifted the glass and sipped at it absently and then glared as Shipwreck and Mouth began to snicker loudly. "What are you two loons gigglin' at?!" He turned on Buyour and pointed at her. "I expected a LOT better from you, girl. What are you doin' out here with this bunch of reprobates?"

She sighed at him, blinking the large brown eyes dramatically in a fashion she never had while sober. "I'm a sucker for new babes.. and Clutch was sooooo happy about his sister having a baaaaaby. And you know.. I was going to make sure we didn't get into trouble, but then.. I wasn't the designated d-d-driver. So I drunk a lotta beer too. And then I got drank. Drunk. Drunken. Non-sober. Whatever. But I'm okay!" She smiled blissfully at him. "I think you're cute Sergeant major!"

He rolled his eyes. "Great." The tea wasn't half bad.. for heretic tea. People just didn't know how to make proper iced tea out here in Arizona. They preferred to brew tea.. chill it, then force a person to try to dissolve sugar in cold fluid. Just wasn't the same as proper tea.

Footloose was looking rather closely at him. "How's your drink? Sergeant major.. how's the drink, huh? Huh Sergeant?"

"It's fine. Sit down." He glared at the small group who happily continued to chat and drink the last of their various alcoholic concoctions.. and beers. Mouth was watching him intently, probably worried about the PT session he'd better know was coming in the morning. "I should make the lotta ya run back ta base.. 'steada ridin' ina truck." He blinked slightly.

Mouth pulled out an extra chair and motioned to it. "Sergeant major.. sit down.. you might as well sit while we're all waiting on Bazooka to finish puking up his shoelaces.." Without being quite certain why, Beach settled into the chair and peered around the bar which seemed to have gone a little blurry. "You feeling okay, Sergeant major?"

He shook his head to clear it. "I'm fine. The danged bar is all.. " He waved one hand around vaguely. "Fuzzy.. fuzzy bar.. " Mouth sat down across from him. "It's the middle of the danged night.. I hadda get up to come get ya'll. I ain't happy 'bout that.. not one bit, no sir. Not happy."

Shipwreck peered at his face as he blinked, trying to clear his vision up. "Wow... Mouth you weren't kidding.. that stuff is fast." He leaned over the table. "Hey BeachHead.. you okay?"

He felt his head wobble slightly as he looked at the annoying sailor. "Yeah.. why am I inna bar? We're 'sposed to be.. uhh.. " He tilted his head back slightly and peered upwards trying to remember. "I came ta.. umm.. wow... lookit them holes inna ceilin' up there.."

Mouth gave a smug smile. "I told you it would loosen him up. This stuff is the best.. he'll be all kinds of drunk now. Come on Sergeant major.. I'll get you a beer."

"Yeah... ya do that.. " Beach continued to tilt his head back. "How ya 'spose them holes got up there?" Shipwreck put his hand on the back of his head and tipped it forward. "Oh whoa.. where'd ya'll come from? Ain't I 'spose to be.. uh.. goin' sommere?" He blinked. "I gotta truck."

Dusty smiled as he slumped into the chair next to him. "Hey.. you can't go driving off now.. you gotta have a beer. Toast Clutch's new niece! Gotta do that before we leave!"

He narrowed his gaze at the lean trooper. "You.." He pointed at him. "You getta too mush troubles. Yer a trouble-maker. I gotta eyeball on ya, so don't ya think that I don't know tha' ya gotta trouble brewin' up inna side-a yer head.. yeah."

Dusty reached to push a tall beer to his hand. "Yeah.. I'm not a trouble-maker.. that's Shipwreck.. but look.. you got a beer to drink!"

BeachHead shifted to hitch his chair sideways a little and looked closely at the beer. "I dunno.. I'm... I'm on duty. No beer on duty."

Clutch shook a finger at him sternly, making him focus on the wagging finger. "Now you gotta toast my niece! If you don't toast my niece.. I'll think you're insulting her! You wouldn't insult a tiny newborn baby, would you!?"

BeachHead thought that over carefully. "Umm.. no..." Picking up the beer, he looked at it suspiciously. "Ya'll didn't spike it, didja?" There was a chorus of protests that they wouldn't ever put anything into his beer. He missed the significant emphasis they were putting on the word 'beer'. "M'kay.. I guess it's okay.. since we're toastin' a bitty baby." He drank down about half the cold beer and licked at his lip a little bit. "Well.. that's not a bad beer.. for a sawdust bar." He suddenly looked at them all. "How come I'm the only one drinkin' a beer... if'n it's a toast?"

"Oh yeah!! We should have drinks too!" There was a general scramble and Beach managed to finish his glass as everyone else got their own drinks. It was okay though, because Dusty was nice enough to bring him a second beer to use in the toast.

"You have to have something to toast with! You drank the other one but you didn't make a toast!" Dusty grinned at him and tapped his beer glass against Beach's. "So make a toast!"

"Ahh.. I ain't very good at that." The Ranger closed one eye to think about it and became slightly distracted by half the room suddenly disappearing. "Whoa.. where'd.. oh.. there's the room again. That was WEIRD!" He sat himself up straight.. when had he started leaning? "Okay.. toastin' a baby. Here's ta a quiet non-cryin' child what grows up big 'n strong n hope she don't take affer Clutch!" He drank deeply and everyone cheered at that and followed suit. "Ohhh-kay. Now we toasted.. now we gotta go back ta base." He started to get up and Footloose put his hands on his shoulders and pushed him back into the chair.

"No no.." Footloose smiled at him. "We gotta make toasts too! Can't just be YOU TOASTING! YOU GOTTA HAVE US TOAST TOO!"

BeachHead frowned at him and Footloose jumped backwards. He wasn't so drunk as to have lost all self-preservation instincts. "Hands off the Sergeant major."

The infantryman nodded at him. "Sorry.. hands off.. got it." He lifted his whiskey-on-the-rocks high. "To a beautiful little girl.. never let her meet any guys like us!" They all drank to that, Clutch chugging his beer down entirely.

"AMEN!!!" The mechanic looked into his empty glass. "Wait.. I have to get another drink!" He wandered to the bar and retrieved another beer and a small glass for BeachHead who seemed to have developed a hole in his beer glass. It had somehow emptied when he wasn't paying attention. "Here Beach.. "

The Ranger leaned over the table to put his face down to the glass and check it out carefully. "What is this?"

Clutch leaned over to peer closely at it too, then sniffed it. "It's... uhh.. it's brown. Drink it, it'll put hair on your chest."

"Bah.. hairy chest.. I got that already." Beach picked up the glass anyway. "So who's next? We ain't got all night here! I gotta drag yer sorry butts back ta base. Got up outa bed ta come get ya buncha pogues. Flint made me. He's a sorry piece of snot.. dumb warrant officer."

Everyone nodded and there was a short discussion about whether Shipwreck or Dusty should toast next. BeachHead ended it by smacking his fist into the tabletop sharply. "SHUDDDDUP! Dusty goes next. Alfa-fa-beta-lickedly 'D' before 'S'. He's next. 'Sides.. Ship ain't no one we want the baby ta meet no how." He tried to peer at the sailor. "Nuthin' personal. But if ya was ta come around mah daughter.. I'd shoot ya. In the nads. Maybe twice. Jus' sayin'."

Shipwreck looked insulted. "But Beach.. why? I'm a nice guy.. lots of gals date me! I gotta lotta dates!"

"Tha's why. No lotta gals-datin' guy would date MAH daughter. Yeah." Beach tilted the glass back and swallowed the drink then coughed wildly. "WHOOO holy crud.. what was that?" He coughed more. "Dang it.. ya done gone and poisoned me!" He huffed out his breath a few times. "Whoa. Gimme another one of those things. I wanna try it again."

* * * *

End Chapter:

I can't help but think of Pandora's Box.. once you get the man 'drunk', there is no going back. I'm planning on a chapter a night posted. Reviews are always adored.


	2. Chapter 2

Chap 2

Wow! Who knew this would be so popular? For info, since Flint is the officer on duty for the night, he cannot leave base. So he's stuck at the Pit, waiting for phone calls, etc. I'd say "poor Flint" but he deserves it. Also, it wasn't clear.. but they slipped BeachHead a mickey in the tea.. it wasn't just a Long Island Iced Tea, but a drugged one.

Like always, I don't own the characters, make no money from the story, and hope everyone enjoys reading it!

* * * *

Flint sighed and glanced at the clock. Now it was nearly one in the morning with no sign of his missing troops or his now missing sergeant major. Breaker beeped his comm unit.

"Yeah Breaker? Flint here.. did they get back?" He knew he sounded irritable, but at this point, he was going to be filling out AWOL reports on nine people, plus whatever he ended up having to write up on BeachHead. Maybe the truck had broken down. The older trucks did break down on occasion, despite Clutch and CoverGirl's best efforts.

"Call from them, sir. You want to take it?" Breaker sounded amused to Flint and he cursed softly under his breath.

"Yeah.. coming now." Arriving in communications, he clicked the line open. "Flint here. Where are you guys? Why aren't you on base?"

Dusty sounded so drunk, Flint was surprised he could remember how to use a phone. "Fliiiint.. buddy.. pal. Love ya. We need a ride to base. We are SOOOOOO drunk. So be a dear.. send somebody out to pick us.. hey.. HEY!! SHUDDY UP! You bunch of crazy... yeah.. go get some peanuts.. anyway.. Flint, ya gotta come get us. If you come get us, I promish ya.. PROmish.. we'll be real good and quiet onna trip to base." He paused a few seconds. "PROMISH!!"

Flint twitched. Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly. "Dusty. I sent BeachHead to get you. Did he get there?" He kept it very simple.

It sounded like Dusty dropped the phone for a few seconds. There was some rattling as he retrieved the phone handset. "Ooops.. shhh... shhhhhh. Sorry Flint. This phone.. it's a little hard to use.. all technology and slippery. Anyway... we need a ride to base, dude. Don't you WANT us back?"

Flint counted to ten. "Dusty, I sent BeachHead to get you. Have you seen BeachHead yet?" He waited while the desert specialist mulled that over.

"Yeah.. BeachHead.. yeah. Beach can't drive us to base. He's too drunk." Dusty sounded so sure of himself that Flint suddenly considered that this might be some elaborate prank. BeachHead didn't get drunk. "So can you come get us, Flint?"

"No, I'm the officer on duty. Where is BeachHead?" He tried to keep his temper. If Dusty was serious, keeping the questions simple would net actual answers. If it were a prank, he didn't want to give them the satisfaction of blowing up.

Dusty was talking away from the phone now. He came back. "He's here somewhere.. hang on.. he's trying to get over here to the phone... it's gonna be a minute.. he can't walk so good."

Flint waited impatiently. There was going to have to be some sort of explanation. Otherwise, heads were going to roll, if he had to go borrow one of SnakeEye's swords to do it.

Finally there was some serious coughing into the phone. "Hullo?"

Flint took a tight rein on his temper. "BeachHead? Are you... drunk?"

"Who's dis? Flint? Yer a big jerk.. sendin' me outa here.. these guys are all drunk! DRUNK! I'm tellin' ya.. I never seen folks so drunk." He mumbled a bit off to one side, and Flint strained to listen. "HEY!! Flint.. ya gotta come get these guys. I gotta truck.. but I can't drive 'em home now."

Flint tried to decide if the Sergeant major was fooling with him or not. "Why can't you drive them back to base?"

There was a loud sigh into the phone. "Cause I can't find mah feet. I can't drive no truck with no feets to work the danged pedals. Stupid warrant officers..."

Smoldering with barely suppressed anger, Flint tightened his control and spoke slowly. "Sergeant major! Have you been drinking?!"

Another hearty coughing fit ensued. "Naw... a'course I ain't been 'driiiiiinking'. Good gawd.. how stupid can one officer be? I been TOASTIN'." He coughed again. "Hey... Clutch.. gimme another one-a them brown drinks.. I ain't burnt my lungs out completely yet!" He coughed twice more. "Hey.. Flint.. ya squatty little beret-wearin' idiot... ya gonna send out a danged transport, or do I gotta run these pogues back ta base on foot?" There was a bit of muffled arguing and Dusty came back.

The younger man laughed a great deal, and rattled the handset a bit. "Oh okay okay.. I'll ask him!! Shut up!! Shut UP!! I can't hear Flint! You guys.. give Beachie another drink.. he's gone a bit dry there.." He took a deep breath. "Whoo.. okay.. so now you talked to Beachie-head.. and by the way.. Bazooka stopped throwing up! Ain't that a good thing!? I don't know what he ate.. but he sure threw it ALLLL up! I think he may have puked up MY dinner! Anyway.. there's this bar.. a few blocks away.. and we were figuring we could go over there.. and wait there. Soo.. just send us a ride to there."

Flint shouted into the phone desperately. "NO! NO NO!! Stay there! Don't go somewhere else! Dusty!!! You guys STAY right there, and that's a DIRECT ORDER!"

"Oh.. a DIRECT order.. hate those ones that wander around without no maps.. " Dusty found this hysterical and laughed for a full minute, then repeated it to the others and laughed with them. "Okaaay okay. Don't get your warranty panties in a bunch. We'll stay here."

Footloose suddenly shouted into the phone. "BRING MORE PEANUTS!! We're OUT OF peanuts.. " Some scuffling noises and Dusty was heard distantly berating the other trooper.

"I told you.. inside voice.. use your inside voice! Shhhh.." The phone clicked off and Flint rubbed his forehead and looked at Breaker who popped his gum twice at him.

"Breaker... I don't suppose you'd want to.."

"No way! Besides, I gotta man the console here." Breaker turned back to the control board and flicked some switches on and off in a useful looking way. "Gotta stay here, can't leave. Biiiiig big situation might happen."

Flint sighed and pointed at the hapless greenshirt. "Okay.. you're up. Go retrieve them."

"Me sir? But.. but I had to wake up BeachHead earlier..."

"That's why you're a greenshirt.. so go fetch the drunks back to base. You can drive a deuce, right?"

Looking hopeful, the soldier opened his mouth to deny all knowledge of driving any vehicle of any make or model or size. Flint cut him off. "You realize, I'll check your file to see if you've been cleared to drive it.. right?"

"Yes sir. I'll leave right away sir." With that, he trudged out.

"Uppity greenshirts. I was hoping to have a QUIET night." Flint puffed out an exasperated breath.

Breaker blew another bubble and sucked it back to snap it loudly. "Shoulda gone off-base if you wanted quiet, sir."

"Yeah yeah.. shut up."

* * * *

BeachHead snorted and tried to look into his shot glass. "I think is empty. I think is enough toastings." He struggled to get up. "Time to go.. back.. " He felt the room spin in a lazy circle to the left. "Whoo.. that's annoyin' as all heck.."

Mouth grabbed his arm to steer him back to the table. Mouth landed on the floor about ten feet away and slid into the wall. "Ow!!!"

Beach narrowed his eyes. "I SAID... hands off the sergeant major. Ya oughta know better, you danged gutless maggot." He stepped to the side about three times and tipped over. "Whoa..."

Shipwreck caught him and righted him easily, giving a light push to prop him against the bar. "Hey.. hang in there Beach.. don't fall overboard on us. People will think you been drinking or something!"

"Not.. not drinkin'... jus' toastin'." The Ranger struggled to uncross his eyes for a moment. "Stupid Flint.. some hotshot warrant officer chappin' my ass ever' time I turn around. That's okay.. that's jus' fine. I been a sergeant longer than he's been inna Army." He narrowed his eyes at Shipwreck. "You ain't even Army. You a squid. Danged Navy SEALs.. ya wanna know how many SEALs I punt outa the Joe trials? Huh? Do ya?!"

Shipwreck shook his head, and then reached up to adjust his sailor's cap. "Naw.. but I'm Navy and I made it in! Not ALL SEALs are bad."

"Well you couldn't prove it by the ones we keep gettin' in. Lazy wretches all of 'em. That Flint.. he's always on about how we need.. neeeeeeed more Navy men. Yeah.. well.." He picked up the tall beer that appeared on the bar next to him. After a long swallow, he gestured at Shipwreck with it. "If'n they'd send me some real recruits.. steada a buncha pogues what can't run a decent distance without fallin' over wit' heat stroke.. " He took a deep breath. "What was I sayin? I lost mah place.."

Dusty patted him a few times. "Yeah.. Beach. PT is pretty hard and all, you should cut it shorter."

He was subjected to a very disdainful look. "I ain't stupid. Ya callin' me stupid? Thinkin' I don't know what all I was talkin' 'bout? I'll show ya some.." Shipwreck poked his forehead so his face tilted upwards. "Whoa.. where'd everyone go? Lookit the holes in that ceilin' up there.. how ya suppose they got there?"

Dusty chortled and tilted the Ranger's head back down. BeachHead blinked at them both. "Whoa.. the room went all loopy and such.. that's weird. Hey Shipwreck... we gotta get back ta base."

Dusty's chortle got louder. "Hey.. he's like an Etch-A-Sketch.. you just tip him over some.. and he resets!"

BeachHead scowled at him. "Now look here.. I'm not gonna stand fer no disrespect like that.." Shipwreck poked his forehead again and he blinked at the ceiling. "Dang... they really need ta repair that.. it's gonna fall in on our heads..." Dusty nudged his head back. "Hey guys.. where ya been?"

Both of them began to laugh hysterically. Dusty wiped his eyes. "I wish he was this easy all the time."

"Ya'll are makin' fun-a me." BeachHead thought of getting angry over it but it seemed like too much trouble. "I'm gonna go pee..." Turning around, he spotted the restroom door and tried to head for it. Needing to stagger back and forth in a zigzag, he eventually made it and disappeared inside.

Shipwreck sighed. "Heh.. he has to tack back and forth to get across the room. This is the best night out ever. Mouth was right.. Beach just needed a little nudge."

Dusty sighed. "I still say it weren't right.. giving him a drug like that. I wouldn't have gone along with that. Why didn't you tell me!?"

Shipwreck grinned. "Cause you wouldn't have gone along with it. Besides.. Mouth said it's the same as getting drunk.. and it's all herbal and natural and such. That means it's harmless.. right?"

Dusty looked doubtful but right then a greenshirt walked in the front door. "Hey!! Our ride must be here!! Come on 'Wreck! Let's get Bazooka and Clutch loaded up!! You're our ride, right?!"

The greenshirt nodded, looking a little overwhelmed. RockNRoll whooped loudly. "Ride's here! Let's round 'em up boys!" Footloose looked up from his table and elbowed Buyour to alert her. With Mouth and Alpine helping, they got Bazooka loaded up. Shipwreck and Dusty heaved a nearly unconscious Clutch up and Footloose lifted Buyour up gallantly. RockNRoll insisted on riding shotgun up front and herded the greenshirt into the cab.

"Let's go let's go! Flint'll be madder than anything if we don't get back!!" RockNRoll's insistence made the greenshirt driver climb in.

He did protest a little. "Flint said to make sure to count heads.. make sure I got everyone. Are you sure everyone got in?"

"Yeah yeah.. come on. Let's go! If we wait too long, Clutch is gonna start barfing, and that's gonna be ugly. I'd rather he puke in the infirmary!" That decided the young trooper and he cranked up to leave.

Back inside the bar....

"Hey.. where'd everyone go?"

* * * *

End Chapter:

Uh oh. Me thinks that someone got left behind. Poor guy. Again, I'm thinking of one chapter a night. Spoil everyone for a while. I had to write a special fic as a favor for someone today, but I'll go back to working on Vacation and Little Medic, and yes, I haven't forgotten about Ninja Hunting.


	3. Chapter 3

Chap3

I'm so glad everyone is enjoying this, it's just great fun to write a really humorous fic for ya'll! Thank you!

* * * *

Flint waited impatiently as the truck rumbled into the otherwise deserted motorpool. As the group disembarked, he checked them off his list to be certain he had all the errant soldiers finally back.

"Where's RockNRoll? Oh.. there you are." He made a final check next to his name. "That's everyone who was out.. you're all gonna be on punishment detail for at least a week. I'll let Duke decide come morning.. and then Beach will run you ragged on the PT....wait..wait.." He turned around and counted heads again frantically. "Where is BeachHead?"

He was treated to the absolute worst collection of innocent looks he'd ever seen. "Come on.. where's BeachHead?"

Dusty put his hands in his pockets. "Uhh... maybe.. he's in the truck?" Flint advanced on him. "Uh.. maybe he didn't come with us?"

"Where is the Sergeant major?" Dusty pointed at the driver who looked surprised.

The greenshirt took one look at Flint and swallowed nervously. "Sir.. they said everyone was in the truck.. and we were sort of hurrying.. and.."

"Wait... 'they' said? 'They' told you.. as in.. the drunk group that couldn't find their shoelaces if they were ordered to... told you, and you didn't think you should check?" Flint was livid.

The greenie just looked resigned suddenly. "Should I go back to get him?"

Flint opened his mouth and shut it as his comm unit chimed. "What?"

Breaker spoke casually. "Call coming in... "

The warrant officer sighed and clicked it with more force than necessary. He pointed at the greenshirt. "You... you take these idiot drunks and make SURE they all go to bed." The young man followed the group as they left.

Flint ran up to the communications system. "Alright.. what now?"

Breaker looked up with a smile while talking into his mic. "Oh yeah yeah... absolutely, BeachHead, they're here. No, they weren't nabbed by Destro. What? Yes, you're absolutely correct. Everyone should use clip earrings, poking holes in your body doesn't make any sense at all... okay.. hang on Beach.. Flint's here. Yeah.. talk to him." A click transferred the call to speaker and Breaker popped the large bubble. "You're on.. go."

"Yo Flint, ya useless bit of yak snot! Thought ya wasn't never gonna get yer lazy no-account butt ta the danged comm! Them maggots left without me! Here I am, sittin' here and passin' the time.. cause I got no ride to the danged base." The Ranger sounded amazingly cheerful about this. "So.. I was thinkin' if'n no one wants me back at base.. I'll jus' stay here! A'course I think I 'bout overstayed my welcome here.. the bartender done said several times that I needed to leave.. so I locked him in the walk-in. So I was thinkin' that.."

Flint interrupted him. "Wait.. you locked the bartender in the walk-in? The freezer? You locked someone in a freezer??"

"Ahh.. well, no ya dingbat, it's a big ole' fridge-der-rater type room. It's a mite chilly.. but hey.. he was dissin' the Army. Said we was nothing but a buncha overpaid security goons. Can't let that pass." Still sounding cheerful, Beach stopped for a moment and Flint distinctly heard him swallow something. "Ahh.. beer ain't half bad here. Leastways.. once you done had several to kill off yer tongue, it tastes okay."

"BeachHead.. I'm sending someone to come get you right now."

"Naw.. I don't wanna come back. If'n I come ta base, I gotta listen ta ya run yer danged yap at me, and ya jus' go on and on until I wanna pull yer head off and feed it ta Junkyard. A'course, the poor dog don't deserve ta hafta eat something that rotted. Soooo, ya have a nice night.. I'll jus' come back when I'm good an' ready. Maybe tomorrow." Beach coughed again. "I wanna get some more of that brown drink, it's powerful. So.. I'll talk to ya tomorrow, Flint."

Flint shouted loudly into the comm. "NO NO NO Don't hang up!! Don't HANG UP!!!! You big dumb Ranger!!"

LadyJaye came walking in and raised an eyebrow. "Well.. I'm guessing tonight hasn't been going smoothly?" He glared at her. "What's going on?"

He gritted his teeth for a minute, mentally going over the on-base roll trying to figure out who would have a good shot at convincing the stubborn drill instructor to return to base, without said person getting seriously injured.

"BeachHead.. wait.. no.. FIRST!! First, I got a call about a whole group of idiots, who were too drunk to get back to base, so they needed a ride. So I sent BeachHead out.. who didn't come back.. and they called again, telling me that now Beach is drunk too. So I sent a greenshirt out, and he came back with everyone BUT BeachHead.. and now BeachHead doesn't WANT to come back.. because he's DRUNK. AND... he's locked someone in a freezer."

Breaker spoke up without looking at them. "Walk-in fridge."

Flint glared at the back of his head. "Thank you. Walk-in refrigerator. Anything else you'd like to correct or comment on?"

Breaker's chin was in the palm of his hand as he fiddled with a control panel absently, watching a series of video screens. "Nope. You got the rest mostly right."

LadyJaye felt her mouth twitch and tried not to laugh outright. "Well...what are you going to do now?"

"I think I'm going to send Lifeline... with someone for backup.. to go fetch Beach back to the base, before he gets into any more trouble." Flint sounded decisive now. "That'll work, I doubt that he'll actually hurt Lifeline.. everyone knows he's harmless. I'm just trying to think of who would be a good backup."

She thought a second. "How about Dusty? He's got a good head on his shoulders."

Flint glared harder as Breaker chuckled, but the specialist didn't turn around. "Dusty is drunk off his butt. He's one of the ones that was out, that's now in." He twitched. "I think LowLight would work.. but he's the secondary on duty."

Breaker stretched to reach a upper switch. "Send Snakes out. You won't have to worry about old Beach hurting SnakeEyes."

"I hate to send a masked commando out to the town bar." Flint sighed. "I'm sending Roadblock. He can probably handle BeachHead.. but Lifeline will be able to talk him into coming back on his own.. without having to have a giant bar fight.. hopefully."

Breaker's unconcerned voice spoke up again. "You know he's armed.. right?"

Flint's gaze narrowed. "What do you mean.. he's armed? Why would you think he's armed? Why would you think he would be carrying to go to a bar to pick up drunks?"

"Cause, it's Beach. He's always armed. Never know when Cobra could be trying to infiltrate.."

".. the surrounding areas, and no place should be considered safe." LadyJaye finished the often repeated lecture the Sergeant major would give at the drop of a hat. "He's right, Flint. He'll be carrying."

"Grrrreat. Let's hope he hasn't shot anyone yet. LadyJaye.. go find Roadblock, and I'll buzz Lifeline up." Flint punched in the intercom code to buzz in the medic's room. LadyJaye sauntered out.

"Hello? Lifeline here.. what time is it?" The voice ended with a huge yawn.

"Flint here.. I need you in the command center immediately for briefing, you have to go to town." He waited for the questions, but instead the line clicked off.

The two men showed up at almost the same time. "Lifeline reporting.."

"Roadblock reporting. LadyJaye says we gotta go scoop up BeachHead? Seriously? The man don't drink. No matter what no one said.. he don't drink and he's on duty tonight if you sent him out anyway. I think you all crazy." Roadblock crossed his arms and gave him a half mocking smile. "This is some sorta joke, right?"

Flint peeled the printed paper up and handed it to them. "I wish. He was at this bar.. hopefully he hasn't left. Go get him and bring him back to base.. and remember he's carrying at least one gun.. knowing him. Actually.. we'll be lucky he isn't carrying a rifle with grenades. Lifeline." He fixed the slender medic with a serious gaze. "I'm hoping you can just talk him into coming with you. BUT.... do whatever it takes to bring him in before he starts wrecking a bar or.. the entire town."

Lifeline smiled smugly. "I have just the thing. We'll swing by medical and I'll pick up this special pouch I keep made up just in case we need to subdue someone dangerous. If he won't listen, all I'll have to do is get close enough to stick him with a needle. I don't want to knock him out.. but I'm more than willing to make him close enough to 'out' for Roadblock here to pick him and pour him into the Jeep."

LadyJaye had wandered in behind the two men and spoke up with curiosity now. "Wait.. how'd he get into town?"

Flint sighed. "He took one of the big transports. I need to send a driver to get it."

She shrugged. "I'll do it. I'm up, and have nothing better to do."

He shook his head. "No way.. it's too dan... uhh.. too much paperwork." His slip of the tongue hadn't passed by her unnoticed however and he winced at the glare he received. "Okay.. go with them. Pick up the truck, while they get Beach."

She still looked irked at him as they left. He sighed. The night couldn't get much worse.

* * * *

BeachHead tripped on the curb.. again. "Danged stupid concrete.." He got back up on the sidewalk and staggered down the road. There was another bar.. just a few blocks away. Dusty had mentioned it. He hadn't mentioned which direction, but to BeachHead's rather fuzzy brain, it couldn't make that much difference.

"Blinky blinky light... that's a bar.." He tripped into the road again and stumbled into the center of the lane as a huge truck approached at high speed. He heard the squeal of brakes being applied and managed to stand upright and turn as the headlights blinded him. "Uh oh."

The truck began to crow-hop with the rear axle as it slid to a stop ten feet past the Ranger. BeachHead laid on his back on the asphalt under the gas tank of the rumbling beast and looked upwards. He'd managed to trip and fall down just in time for the truck to pass over him harmlessly. He heard the door swing open and the driver ran around to the front frantically.

"Holy crud!!! Hey.. mister? Mister?" He watched the legs as the man turned around looking for him. Finally the guy climbed quickly back into the cab of the truck and drove off down the road quickly, no doubt fearing the sneaky ninjas were playing pranks on him. That's exactly what Beach would be thinking in his place.

Just to be certain he would be okay, Beach decided to lay in the road for another few minutes before he sat up. "Whooooooo... that sucked." He clambered to his feet and stumbled sideways until he fetched up against the lightpole on the corner. The loud thud echoed up the metal pole with a long ringing noise. "Oh shut up.. stupid light pole.. YOU didn't get run over by no danged trucks!" He backed up and glared at the pole. "I said.. SHUT UP!" He swung a fist at it and then hopped in the air shaking his hand. "OW!! Dang metal poles.. son-of-a.. I'll show you!"

"Do you realize, you're having an argument with a lightpole?" The smarmy young man was smirking at him when he turned around to look.

"Yeah! I know what I'm a arguein' with. Ain't none a yer concern sonny.. go find yer mommy a'fore she misses ya." Beach swayed for a second, feeling the wave of dizziness washing over him again. "Oh... crud.. wish it'd stop that.."

The young man laughed at him. "What a useless drunk..." He reached out to shove the Ranger hard. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! LEGGO MY ARM!!!!!"

Beach bent the elbow just a inch further. "Hands.... off... the Sergeant major. Unnerstand me... sonny?"

"OH MY GOD!!! You're breaking my arm!!!"

* * * *


	4. Chapter 4

Chap 4

Will the three Joes manage to run BeachHead to ground? Will they be able to corral him? I'm glad everyone is finding this fun to read, because it was grand fun to write.

* * * *

Breaker popped his gum time after time, keeping a count in his head of how many times. At twenty-seven Flint let out a growl and he stopped. Not even close to his personal record.. but with a night like tonight, he shouldn't be surprised that Flint was a bit on edge. The police scanner channel crackled and he clicked over to it. Listening to it, he mulled over the information. He figured that a mugging shouldn't be anything they would be concerned with. Barfights and general mayhem would be what he'd expect.

Flint jumped when the comm unit beeped at him. "Hey.. Flint here.. "

Lifeline sounded rather peeved. "We're at the bar.. no BeachHead. We did let the bartender out of the cooler. He's a bit annoyed. He said that BeachHead started quoting Health Codes at him, so he tried to throw him out....physically."

Flint groaned as the medic continued. "I set his two broken fingers and put his shoulder back into place, and we called for an ambulance so he can go get his ribs taped up. Any ideas on which direction we should go hunting?"

Roadblock's voice was heard distinctly in the background mimicing Elmer Fudd. "We're huntin' Beachies... heheheheheheheheh!"

The warrant officer put a hand over his eyes. "Did you find the truck?"

"It's in the parking lot. Jaye's going to take it back to base, right?"

Flint considered. "No. Tell her to start a search pattern. With two vehicles, and three people total, you can cover more ground. Look in the bars, he mentioned going to another bar. Don't let him injure any of you, so no tackling him... Roadblock! You hear that? And tell LadyJaye too."

Her voice sounded annoyed. "Don't worry Flint, I have a comm unit and I'm used to dealing with stubborn stupid smelly men. BeachHead won't be much different." He heard Roadblock's whistle in the background. "We'll check in on the half hour until we find him. He can't have gotten far, the bartender said he could barely walk. What made him start drinking anyway?"

Puffing out a breath in exasperation, the officer spoke quietly. "I don't know. I'll bet Shipwreck had something to do with it, just because every time trouble happens and he's anywhere nearby, it's always traced back to him. Maybe they tricked him into drinking a soda with alcohol in it. It doesn't matter right now, just find him."

Breaker coughed softly. "Ahh... I got a police report of a unruly man causing a disturbance. It's about.. " He clicked up a map to cross reference. "Wow.. it's over fourteen blocks away. He's made it quite a distance. Head north on 15th street.. take a right on 3rd avenue. Look for flashing blue lights. I think all the cops they have are headed there right now."

Flint groaned. "Oh great.. You guys get there! Try to convince them to just let you take him back to base. If he's his usual sunny personality, they should jump at the chance to not have to deal with him."

Lifeline agreed. "Yeah.. but would we rather he spend a few hours in their drunk tank cooling off and sobering up before WE want to deal with him?"

Sighing in resignation, Flint spoke very firmly. "No.. we would not rather that.. plus.. let's face it. I've seen their drunk tank, it won't hold him. He'll end up taking out the back wall by running into it head first or something and we'll get stuck with the bill for that. Plus.. don't forget.. the first thing those poor cops will do is try to disarm him."

LadyJaye piped up. "Yeah.. Lifeline will spend all night trying to patch them all up, and we'll STILL have to round up Beach afterwards. Better to snag him and get him back to base before they try to arrest him." She sighed. "I see the police cruiser.. only one there so far. Oooooo... Lifeline.. you got a patient."

Flint jumped to his feet. "What? What's going on?" The comm was silent for several minutes.

Finally Roadblock popped back on. "Hey Flint.. he's already gone from here.. put two guys down.. but they're okay. Just bumped heads and such. From the look of it, they decided to shake him down for his wallet. Guess they didn't know he don't bother to carry a wallet. He didn't pull a weapon on them though, from their version of events anyway." He paused. "You sure you don't want to send SnakeEyes out?"

Considering it, Flint shifted his weight. "I'd rather you guys find him and pick him up fast. I'll alert SnakeEyes and send him your way.. but don't wait."

"We're already moving.. fanning out from the incident area now. It's only been ten minutes." Roadblock spoke a bit away from the comm unit. "Yeah.. I'll take this direction.. give a yell if you see him. Jaye.. be careful." Flint heard her voice snapping at the machine gunner. "No.. but he ain't the only one lurking around here neither. Don't want you getting knocked down by a mugger because you were focused on looking for the drunk Ranger." He spoke into the comm finally. "Okay.. we're spreading out, Flint. Will keep you updated."

Flint sighed heavily. "I hope that the local PD doesn't realize he's military yet.. maybe we can get him to the base before they figure out it's one of ours. He's not in a regular uniform.. plenty of civies wear fatigue pants.."

Breaker snorted, still watching the scanner channels. "Yeah.. but first, most civies don't wear tactical vests, and secondly, most civies don't yell 'Hands off the Sergeant major' just before they break someone's arm." He glanced at the warrant officer. "I heard that over the scanner just a minute ago, five blocks from this disturbance." He paused. "You know.. if you're gonna pound your head on something, don't do it on the button area.. you'll mess up all of my settings. Bang your head on the wall or somewhere harmless."

Flint stopped pounding his head on the console and sighed again. "Just buzz SnakeEyes and get him up to date and out headed that way. Once he's in town he can at least stay out of sight while he hunts down the idiot."

Roadblock's voice suddenly shouted through the comm. "I got him!! I found him!! Come on Beach.. let's go.. " The comm clicked off and Flint waited, pacing back and forth.

He finally opened the channel. "Roadblock.. are you there?"

A very slurred voice with a thick accent answered him. "Hey... Flint. Ya still bein' a low-browed stuck-up donkey?"

Flint blinked. "Where's Roadblock? BeachHead!! You have to come back to base!!"

After a bit of snorting and coughing, Beach sighed. "Yeah yeah.. sometime later.. I'm busy. Roadblock is fine." There was a metallic pounding noise. "Hear that? He's fine.. he's enjoying the dumpster here. You like in there, right Roadblock?" There was muffled yelling. "I'm GONNA TAKE YER COMM, M'KAY?" More muffled yells and pounding noises. "M'kay.. thanks! Flint, I gotta comm unit now, so when ya get confused on how ta adjust yer beret, ya can call and ask mah advice, see? But don't get yer panties in a wad.. I'm busy.. buncha pogues in this town don't have no manners neither by the way. Hey!! HEY!!! Get outa my way!" There was a scuffle from the noises. "Dumb mailboxes.." Several loud clunks. "I said MOVE YA DUMB BOX!! Don't ya get in mah way again!" Another clang. "Ya got no manners! Didha yer momma never teach ya ta move when someone wants ta walk by? Was yer momma a post office box? MOVE!!"

Flint stared at Breaker. "Is he arguing with a mailbox?"

"Does it surprise you? He'd argue with a rock. And win. The rock would give in eventually."

"Oh shut up. BeachHead! Get back to base!" The comm line was silent and he turned back to the comm officer. "Did you get Snakes sent out? Tell him to break that idiot's arm for me."

"Yeah.. he's taking one of the cycles out.. probably halfway to town the way he drives. Only person with a heavier foot on the gas is CoverGirl. You think we should send her out with a Wolverine? That could add to the fun. We should rouse up the whole Joe team."

"Shut up. I'm gonna put everyone awake on KP for a week at this rate."

LadyJaye reported in. "Found Roadblock. Whew.. you stink, my man. He's gotta be close. How drunk was he, Roadblock?"

Flint could make out the big man's voice in the background. "He's real drunk.. he couldn't stand up straight.. not kidding. I figured I could just pin him and get him dragged back to the truck. Next thing I know, I'm being tossed into the garbage! Geez.. I'm nearly twice his weight!"

Lifeline's voice sounded winded. "Figures.. I went the opposite direction. Where is he?"

Breaker clicked a switch. "Another 911 call. Large man shouting at something.. apparently he's threatening a bookstore sign with dismemberment.. uh oh.." Flint twisted to look at him. "Shots fired.. Beach remembered he's carrying."

LadyJaye's breathless voice sounded loud. "Shots to the north.. couple of streets over.. take that alleyway to the right, Roadblock.. let's hem him in."

They left their comm lines open, although Roadblock was missing his. Lifeline's voice sounded a bit apprehensive. "Beach.. hey.. that you? Come on.. time to go home. Put away the gun.. good... see? Now.. how about we have a chat?"

"I dun wanna.. get away from me." The suspicion in his voice was very evident. "Don't get near me.. ya stick a needle in me.. I swear I'll punch ya in yer face."

Lifeline began to sound nervous as he faked a cheerful tone. "Oh come on.. why would you think I'd do that? I just miss you. I wanted to.. umm... share some coffee with you.. back at the Pit.. and so I tried to find you. But you were way out here in town.. causing trouble."

"I ain't caused NO TROUBLES! It's that danged sailor causing trouble.. and Flint! That stupid warrant officer.. he sent me out here! I'd be in bed SLEEPIN'! But NOOoooooo! He always goes sending me off on stuff.. jus' cause he knows he can! Jus' cause he's got rank, he pushes me around all the time, tryin' ta IRK me!"

LadyJaye soothed at him. "Hey hey.. just calm down. Flint is a big pain.. yeah.. but you should be ranting about it in the morning. Not out here in town.. come on.. I can see you don't feel well."

Some indistinct grumbling which she answered in a calm even tone. "I know.. they're all irritating jacks.. but that's okay.. we'll go back to base.. and you and I can sit over some coffee and bitch about them the rest of the night.. right?" He grumbled some more and Flint hoped things were going well enough to get him brought back safely.

* * * *

Changing to the POV of the Joe's in townspeople

* * * *

Lifeline smiled a little when Beach stared suspiciously at him. He was carefully hiding the syringe behind his back, trying not to be completely obvious about it.

It wasn't working well and Beach snapped irritably. "Show me yer hands! Danged medic.. back off!" He staggered backwards a few steps. "Back the hell off! I will brain you with a rock, you jus' TRY ME!"

Lifeline quickly tucked the needle into his back pocket and held both hands open. "See? Nothing.. " He just knew he was going to end up with a black eye tonight. "No needles.. just me.."

"Yeah... yeah.. yer harmless.. pacifist medic, jus' what I need." Beach spotted a plane going overhead and put a hand on his sidearm. "We need air cover.. is too open here.."

LadyJaye held out her hands, gesturing downwards repeatedly. "Ease down.. it's just a civie flight.. look.. see? It's just passing over."

Beach's face tilted up as he followed the flight. "Wow.. lookit.. stars.. I like being in the desert.. ya can see stars all night.. 'less it's cloudy..." He staggered backwards and waved his arms to catch his balance, blinking wildly. "Whoa.. hey... hi guys. Where'd ya'll come from?"

Lifeline exchanged confused looks with Jaye, deliberately not looking towards Roadblock who was stealthily creeping up on the sergeant from behind.

"Yeah.. hi Beach. Fancy seeing you here. We saw you here.. and uhh.. we.. umm.. thought you'd like a ride back to base. Getting late, and I.. heh heh.. I would have thought you'd want to get some sleep. Morning will be coming early.."

Beach closed one eye to think about it. "Why... why am I out here?" Taking a chance, Lifeline casually walked up and gave him a light nudge with his elbow in a friendly way. Beach staggered a few steps down the sidewalk in the right direction. "Hey.. watch it. Dang it.."

Lifeline held out a hand with false concern. "Oh.. sorry.. didn't mean to knock you off-balance. Ha ha. Don't know my own strength! Ha ha ha!" He tried to sound relaxed as he laughed lightly. To his relief, BeachHead chuckled instead of braining him. "Come on.. I left the Jeep down here.. hey.. where's Jaye? She came along.. there she is!! Hi LadyJaye! Look who I found!! BeachHead was in town!"

She smiled and played along, falling in beside him on the opposite side. "Wow.. cool. Hey Beach. Man.. about time you were in bed. I've never seen you out so late. You are going to be one tired pup by the time we get back to base!" Her cheerfulness made Beach snort.

"Whatever." He walked between them with a great deal of weaving and staggering. "Why am I drunk? I don't drink.." His knees suddenly sagged and he puffed as he struggled to stay on his feet. "DANG IT!! I am NOT drunk! I don't drink!"

Jaye leaned over and lightly supported one of his arms to help keep him upright. "Easy does it Ranger man." He shrugged her off and growled lowly. "Ooo.. calm down."

"I don't wanna! Don't tell me what to do! You and that Flint.. yer in cahoots together! Always mutterin' together in a corner.. thinkin' I can't hear ya!!" He shook his head trying to clear it. "Ya'll are jus' tryin' to make me go back ta base! I ain't havin' NONE a it!"

* * * *

End Chapter

Oooo, how do you think they're doing? Lifeline is awfully sneaky, and taking advantage of BeachHead's EtchASketch brain on alcohol.


	5. Chapter 5

Chap 5 - Early updating today!! It's FREEEZING here!!! SEND WARM WEATHER!!!!

Uh-oh! He's getting belligerent again.. will they be able to get a handle on him? Or just shoot him a few times to slow him down?

* * * *

Jaye eyed Lifeline over his back as Beach continued to rant. Tilting her head towards the Ranger, she flicked her gaze from the medic's pocket to the staggering man. Lifeline gave a slight nod and looked over his shoulder to jerk his chin at Roadblock to indicate he should move up. As big as the gunner was, he easily slipped up silently to just behind the drunken man.

Just as Roadblock lifted his arms in preparation to grab him from behind, BeachHead whirled and planted one combat boot into his chest hard. Roadblock staggered backwards and the Ranger twisted on his hip to bring the same foot around and thump LadyJaye in the shoulder to send her sprawling into the road. Lifeline wrapped one arm around his neck from behind and hung on to his back, popping the cap off the syringe even as Beach yelled and reached over his shoulder to grab at him.

The needle plunged into a bulging pectoral muscle, and BeachHead seized the medic and dragged him free, cocking a fist back.

Lifeline tried futilely to jerk free. "No no no!! Don't punch me!" Too late as the fist snapped forward and tagged him in the eye socket. "OW!"

Roadblock had easily recovered and started to move in crouching low. "Now.. look here.. you're gonna come with us.. make it easy.."

BeachHead snarled angrily at the whole small group. "Ya bastids.. knew I shouldn't a.. shouldn't... ahh.." He swayed suddenly.

Lifeline got to his feet, one hand clasped over his eye. "Back off.. back off of him.. it's okay Beach. Calm down. Guys, let the stuff work on him.." He stepped closer and BeachHead lifted his fists up, but staggered sideways as he lost his balance. "Don't hit me again.. I'm your friend.. don't hit me.. I just don't want you to hurt yourself." They all turned as they heard sirens. "Oh geeez... come on.. let's get him to the Jeep." Lifeline made a grab at one arm and nearly caught another punch for his trouble. "BeachHead!! The cops are coming!"

"Bring it." He began to draw his sidearm and LadyJaye knocked it out of his hand. Before he could respond, Roadblock wrapped arms around him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides. "Hey.. get offa me!" His legs suddenly gave way. "Oh.. dang it.. I lost mah feet again..

Jaye patted him down. "Where's your guns?"

He leered at her. "Aww.. that's what ALL the ladies ask me.. " She tilted her head and ran one hand between his thighs and he yelped. "Hey! That's all me.. no guns there!" Reaching around to the side of his thigh, she pulled the combat knife free and tucked it into her own belt. "Hey.. that's mine! If you wanna grope me.." He suddenly lifted both legs and wrapped them around her waist and pulled her in close, his weight held up by Roadblock's hold on him. "Then.. grope me properly, Jaye." He smiled a very satisfied smug smile. She heaved a sigh and went on with searching him. She found the two hidden small pistols and tucked those into her thigh pockets.

"Alright.. enough fun Ranger boy." She tugged at his legs but he'd locked his ankles behind her back. "Let go! Lifeline.."

The medic pried him off of her, much to his evident entertainment. "Sorry Jaye.. I've never seen him drunk.. it seems he's somewhat subject to mood swings. I thought that dose would be enough to just about knock him out, evidently not."

"You think? Let's go.. Roadblock, can you handle him?" Her annoyance rose as she saw a cop car turn onto the road, rolling along slowly. "Go go go!! Into the alley before they spot us!"

BeachHead tried to brace his legs on the ground, struggling to stop them from moving as Roadblock heaved him along. "Geez.. Beach.. you're being a real pain in my rear! Man.. come on!" Finally he lifted his feet off the ground. "Jaye.. you carry any restraints? I'd give my left leg for a set of cuffs right now."

"Don't ya'll cuff me! I swear ya'll gonna regret this! I SWEAR!! I'll kick yer ass! PUT ME DOWN!"

LadyJaye sighed and motioned down another alley. "This way.. " Once they were deep in the shadows, she pulled out a set of cuffs and held them up to the Army Ranger. "Do you see these?"

He peered at them. "Uh-huh."

"Do you know how uncomfortable it's going to be if I cuff you and have Roadblock toss you over his shoulder to carry you all the way to the Jeep?"

"Really uncomfy."

"That's right. Do you WANT me to put them on you? Because I don't care.. either way, you're going with us!" She scowled at his face.

"Yer so gorgeous when yer angry.." He made a kiss in the air at her. "No wonder Flint wants to bone ya when ya been arguein'." Her eyes narrowed and he looked even more pleased. "Oooo.. yer nose jus' gets alllll squinchy upppy.."

"That's it! Roadblock.. pin his arms.." The instant that the grip loosened across his chest, BeachHead exploded into action, slamming an elbow upwards into one muscled shoulder, and sweeping a leg backwards to knock Roadblock down hard. He sprang into a run, escaping with such speed that Lifeline and Jaye had no time to prevent him from running facefirst into the brick wall of the alley, knocking himself onto the concrete with a loud crunch.

"OOomph.." Sprawled on the ground, he blinked up as Jaye stood over him shaking her head. "Well.. tha' did NOT go as planned."

Jaye sounded fairly annoyed. "Obviously. Your steering is gone. Gimme your wrist.." He struggled in vain as she and Roadblock pinned him to the ground and got him rolled onto his stomach to handcuff him securely. "There.."

"GET OFFA ME! When I get loose, I'm gonna break yer arms!" His shouts got louder and Lifeline sighed.

Reaching into the medical bag he pulled out a roll of bandage and stuffed it into his mouth. "Hush. This is for your own good." A quick wrap of a second bandage secured it, causing all the screaming to be muffled to grunts. "Okay.. Can you just carry him?" In answer, Roadblock bent and hefted him easily over one shoulder.

"No problem." He slapped BeachHead's leg sharply as he tried to kick. "You kick me Sergeant major, and I'll drop you on your silly head a few times. We understand each other?"

"Mmmph mmphhh uunnggg uffff!" He squirmed around but stopped kicking.

Roadblock shook his head at the medic and the intel specialist. "Okay.. which way to the Jeep?" They moved down several dark alleyways, passing some unsavory individuals. None of them seemed willing to confront the dangerous looking group with their captive. Beach's muffled screaming rose every time he spotted one of them. Lifeline wasn't certain if he thought they would help him, or if he just wanted to stop to pick a fight with them.

Jaye stopped at the head of an alleyway. "Jeep is a couple hundred feet.. no cops.. let's go." They rushed along, and Roadblock dumped the irate sergeant into the back seat where he promptly righted himself and shoved with both feet to push himself back out the far side, thumping onto the pavement on his head.

"Oommpa.. nnuhh fuuufta!" Lifeline got in to crank the engine. "NUUUUFFFTA!!"

The medic looked around nervously. "Get him in the back!" Roadblock grumbled as he heaved the bound man back into the seat, holding onto the tac vest this time to make sure he couldn't escape over the door again. In the struggling, BeachHead managed to get the gag pulled free.

"Leggo!!" Jaye jumped into the passenger seat. "Gal! You're so doomed come morning! I'm gonna run those shapely legs right offa yer butt!"

Jaye looked at the medic. "Just drive! Get us out of here. Roadblock, don't let him jump out." Roadblock was slapping his legs aside as he tried to twist himself in the seat to kick at him.

"GET OFF ME!!"

Roadblock managed to grab his leg in a tight grip and twisted him back to a seated position. "Jaye!! Buckle his seatbelt! That'll keep him in place!" Lifeline got them onto the main road headed out of town.

LadyJaye sighed and climbed over the back of her seat, digging her hands down into the seat to find the straps. BeachHead took the opportunity to lick her neck as she bent over him. "Oh good lord!! Get away from me!"

He grinned. "Oh.. you're taaaasty. Gonna haffa call ya LadyTasty.." She put a hand on his face and pinned his head back to the seat. "Ooo.. that's okay.. want it all rough on me? I can take it! I'm a tough guy!"

"I am going to SO knee you in the crotch in about one minute." Gritting her teeth, she finally yanked one of the straps loose. Roadblock tried to keep his legs pinned while she worked. She yanked her hand away as he twisted enough to get his mouth onto her arm and licked it too. "I'm gonna punch you in the gonads, Beach.. drunk or not.."

"Oooo.. kinky.. I told ya.. I'm tough, I can take it.." His leer made her roll her eyes. "I bet Flint can't take it, he probably cries like a big old beret-wearing baby..."

She found the other strap. "I hate drunks. I really really do. I never saw you like this. I sure don't like it at all, Beach. Usually you are a lot more of a gentleman."

"Southern gentleman.. but not tonight.. I'll be yer dirty boy tonight Jaye.." She clicked the buckle and yanked the straps tight. "OW! Easy on the merchandise!"

She shook her head and climbed back over the seats.

He gave a wolf whistle at her. "Niiiice view.. ya gotta really nice butt Jaye.. don't she gotta nice butt, Roadblock?" His amused voice made her twist to glare at the cook.

He held up both of his hands, now that he didn't need to keep holding BeachHead's legs. "Yo.. I will point out, that I ain't said nothing!"

"You just keep it that way." He nodded at her and she twisted back around. As they drove she pulled out her communicator. "Jaye to base."

"Flint here, what is going on?! Why haven't you checked in?!" His shouts made her jaw clench and Lifeline cringed to the side, hoping she wouldn't smack him as the nearest target.

Her angry voice rose. "I'm checking in now! We have the bastard tied up in the back seat!" There was the unmelodious noise of BeachHead attempting to sing a Johnny Cash song from the backseat. "Great.. we're headed back to base.. left the truck in town, I'll go get it tomorrow."

Flint sounded a bit more satisfied. "Good, get back here as fast as possible. Maybe we've averted most of.. what? Breaker.. you're kidding me.." After a pause he came back. "There's a checkpoint on the main road to base.. they're searching for Beach.. you're going to have to stop.. can you hide him?"

LadyJaye held the comm unit back to let Flint listen to the off key warbling from the back seat. "Does it sound like we could hide him?"

"Uhh.. no. Hang on.. we got a message coming in from SnakeEyes. He says he'll draw them off, and you can blow through. Keep Beach out of sight though.. I don't want them on the doorstep tomorrow morning. And I don't know what Snakes is planning, but please.. don't have it involve any explosions.."

There was a clicking noise of SnakeEyes clucking his tongue over the comm, his version of 'screw off'. Flint's grumbles were shut off as the comm line shut down. Lifeline slowed down. Soon enough they heard the sound of the motorcycle motor as the ninja pulled into the road behind them. As he approached from the rear, he gunned the engine and popped a wheelie as he passed them.

BeachHead snorted as they watched the cycle accelerating to over a hundred miles per hour as it disappeared into the night. "Show off. Danged ninjas gotta look cool all the danged time." The medic pulled off the road and shut off the lights to wait.

Lifeline heard the sirens suddenly get loud ahead of them and the cycle flashed back by them, followed by all eight cop cars from town. "Geez... I didn't know those patrol cars could go that fast. You don't think they'll catch him do you?"

LadyJaye laughed. "StormShadow couldn't run him down, those backwoods cops don't stand a chance. Let's get back to base!"

Lifeline sighed and cranked back up, pulling them onto the road to head off at a sedate speed to not attract any attention. When they passed through the gate, BeachHead berated the two guards at top volume about the state of their uniforms. One was too rumpled while the other one was too ironed. He couldn't seem to decide whether he was more irate about the messy one or the one spending too much time at the ironing board. Either way, they exchanged rather nervous glances and waved them through.

Finally in the motorpool, Lifeline turned the engine off and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. "Oh good lord.. what a night. Never thought I'd be bringing BeachHead back to the Pit in handcuffs at..." He tried to focus his eyes on his watch. "At a unholy hour of the morning."

Jaye had gotten out and gone around to the side where BeachHead was demanding to be let out of the Jeep. "If you don't shut up, I'll leave your butt sitting out here all night long." He clamped his lips shut and waited for her to unbuckle the seatbelt. Scooting out, he jerked himself away from her hand.

"Get yer hands offa me!" Roadblock wrapped one beefy hand around his arm, ignoring the yanking and cursing.

Flint strode in and stepped right in front of the angry sergeant major. "Finally! You want to explain yourself!?"

BeachHead lowered his gaze and muttered something softly. Flint leaned in. "You want to repeat that?"

He muttered again, and Flint frowned at him and put his face in close to his. "Speak up!"

Beach grinned. "Suck me." Then he headbutted the warrant officer hard, knocking him backwards onto his rear. "Yeah.."

Flint growled and pointed at the doorway. "Get him in a cell. Lock him up." He got to his feet. "You are going to regret this in the morning! You just wait!"

Roadblock dragged him along by his arms, while the Ranger struggled and kicked. "Let go of me! You can't lock me up! I'm on duty!" They disappeared down the hydraulic lift.

Flint wiped at his nose, finding a little blood dripping from it. "This has been a really miserable night, and I'm going to make sure everyone responsible pays dearly."

Lifeline walked up and sighed, watching the motorpool doors being secured by the guards. "I don't know what happened. I've never known him to get drunk."

Jaye nodded seriously. "I've never seen him do more than maybe finish one beer. And that's with a meal on a special occasion.. off duty. He wouldn't just go get drunk."

Flint sniffed back the blood. "Yeah, well he sure looks drunk to me. I'm posting a guard on his cell door too." He wiped at his nose again. "Great."

Breaker's voice came over Lifeline's comm unit. "Lifeline, emergency in the stockade." There was a pause. "Immediate assistance.. "

Lifeline was already rushing into the personnel lift. Flint and LadyJaye joined him. Once the lift descended to the stockade level, Lifeline sped down the hall at a run, and the two others jogged behind him. They found Roadblock unfastening the cuffs off of a limp BeachHead.

"I didn't DO anything to him. He just went all stiff suddenly and passed out. I figured at first he was fooling, trying to get me to turn him loose. But he's out cold." Roadblock backed up to let Lifeline in to check for vital signs.

The medic muttered to himself. "Beach.. you okay? Come on.. eyes responsive.. reflex.. he's okay.. he's.. well, passed out. Pretty far under though. I think I would rather he be in the infirmary." He turned to Flint. "Call the infirmary, tell them to send a litter down."

Flint stepped away to made the call, only mildly perturbed at being ordered around by the medic. When there was some sort of medical emergency, the medics ranked everyone around them, but Lifeline himself would simply take over and order anyone available if he needed them. Just one of the quirks of their medic.

Two interns arrived in a timely manner to move the drill sergeant. Flint watched them go, Lifeline following. Calling down the hallway, he got Lifeline's attention. "Keep him under restraints, I'm not organizing a hunting party here in the Pit." He got a vague wave over one shoulder. "I mean that!" Another more vague wave. "Why doesn't anyone take me serious?"

LadyJaye tilted her head at him. "I don't know, why don't we discuss why me going to pick up a truck in town was suddenly 'too dangerous'."

Roadblock's eyebrows went up. "I think I'm gonna go make sure Snakes made it back okay. You're on your own Flint."

He watched him leaving. "Thanks.. nice to know you got my back.."

The reply drifted back down the hallway as he turned the corner leaving. "Trust me.. it ain't your BACK that's in danger.."

* * * *

End Chapter

Well, he's back. Wait until he wakes up in the morning, how much fallout will there be? I'm really loving the reviews I'm getting, very entertaining! I'm happy you're enjoying it, and THANK YOU for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

Chap 6

The next morning.. including PT. I'm glad everyone enjoyed the BeachHead hunting.

* * * *

Duke was reading over the night's reports, and the sheafs of police reports as well. Flint was standing next to him giving explanations and answering questions. Duke was trying manfully to not laugh over the series of incidents.

"Okay.. so we're giving out the standard, 'we will be looking into disciplinary measures against any guilty parties' lines, right?" Flint nodded and rubbed his eyes. "You're had quite an exciting night. Did you ever find out what started BeachHead drinking? I'm pretty certain that we want to avoid that in the future."

Flint scowled. "Well, I'd love to say he was just drinking, but blazes.. he really doesn't do stuff like this. It's nearly five-thirty in the morning here.. and no BeachHead yet. I was planning on going down to the infirmary to see if he woke up."

"Well, it'd be better to hear the reasons directly from him. But since he passed out.. that's usually a good bet that he overindulged in alcohol and he may not remember." Duke hummed softly.

Flint sighed at that. "To be fair, Lifeline shot him up with some sort of tranquilizer, so it wasn't just alcohol knocking him out." Duke nodded and waved for him to go. "I'll give you a yell when I know something."

"Good. I'll be meting out some serious punishment details to everyone."

* * * *

Flint entered the infirmary looking for Lifeline. He found the medic dozing in his office chair, a small piece of beef laid over his eye. "Hey.. sorry to wake you up.."

Lifeline sat up, catching the meat in one hand. "No no.. no problem." He yawned. "I needed to go check to see if Beach is awake yet." He glanced at the clock and groaned. "Great.. it's been over an hour since the last time I checked him. I must have fallen asleep."

One of the other medics poked his head in and gave him a friendly grin. "Lifeline.. your favorite patient woke up. Other than being as sad a case of hangover as I've ever seen.. he's okay. We took off the restraints after he assured us he wouldn't be able to crawl out of the room if it was on fire."

Lifeline sighed. "Is he throwing up?" Getting a negative reply, he smiled at Flint. "Well, small favors and all that." They went down to the room where they found the sergeant major buried under the covers groaning every so often.

Flint smiled widely at the medic. "I've sooo been waiting for this moment. HI BEACH.. FEELING OKAY THIS MORNING??"

"Oh gawd.. it's Flint.." The utterly miserable face poked out to squint at him. "Go ahead.. screetch away. I know yer gonna. Enjoy it while ya can.."

Flint's smile got wider. "YEAH, YOU'D THINK YOU'D HAVE BETTER JUDGEMENT!" He enjoyed the shudders that passed over the man at each syllable.

"I hate ya... really." Beach squinted against the glare at the clock on the wall. "Aww gawd.. I hafta get up.. PT starts in twenty minutes." He crawled out of the bed, with Flint looking startled and backing up. "Don't worry. I'm not naked, Flint." His rumpled fatigue pants looked like the ones from the night before. "I gotta go get dressed.. agghh, something crawled in my dang mouth and died.." His muttering faded as he went out the door, then he came back escorted by one of the interns. "Tell 'em I can leave, Lifeline."

"He can leave." Lifeline seemed amused. "Doc will see you after PT."

"Yeah yeah.." The grumpy sergeant staggered off down the hallway clutching his head.

Flint beamed happily. "I'm so darned happy I'm going off shift and going to bed now. I imagine PT will be horrible this morning. If of course, he doesn't fall out on the walk up to the PT courses.."

"He won't.. he's gonna go run PT with a pounding headache, hurting all over, and nauseous. Everyone else is going to have to suffer because he is." Lifeline shrugged. "I'm night shift too. I'll catch heck this evening maybe."

* * * *

BeachHead squinted against the early morning sunlight. It was turning itself into lasers, jabbing his optic nerve and setting it on fire. Standing alone out on the PT field mere minutes before his greenshirts would arrive, he scowled at the grass growing under his boots. "Shhhhhh..." Damn grass making too much noise this early.

Turning around, he put his back to the eastern light beginning to show and watched the young men and women arriving for morning PT. Instead of bellowing for them to rush, he waited for them to trot up and form into a orderly group.

"Alright.. you know the danged drill.. drop and gimme a hundred... " He struggled to clear his throat, hating the hoarse sound he was croaking out. "Ya'll bust those out faster this morning.. stop that danged.. " He stopped and coughed several times. "Monkey balls!" He turned and spat phlegm to the side. "Whadda ya lookin' at?!" His head pounded in time to the shouted counting from the recruits and he gritted his teeth.

"FORTY-SEVEN!! FORTY-EIGHT!!"

He closed his left eye trying to soothe the throbbing pain. Suddenly his eyes widened as he recounted heads. "Where's Mouth and Buyour?" No one answered and he booted the nearest greenie lightly in the thigh to get his attention. "Where's Mouth and Buyour?"

"Mouth is in the infirmary, Sergeant Major!" The sharp tone cut through his eardrums and he growled angrily. "Buyour was running late, Sergeant major, but she was coming as quickly as possible!"

He stalked through the group, his hoarse voice sending them into sit-ups. As they all began to shout out the count for those, he swore their voices became more shrill, causing him to almost wince each time. His careful pacing was covering the fact that he had cramps running across his back and shoulders. He had numerous bruises all over that he couldn't begin to explain, although he did distinctly remember getting the lump on his head running into a brick wall.

"SHUT UP! Ya'll don't need to be doin' all that danged shoutin' this morning! Ya'll think I can't count fer my own danged self!?" He felt his stomach roll over twice and groaned under his breath. "Williams! Get up and go get me a bottle of water!"

Williams jumped to his feet in one smooth effortless leap, smiling broadly and nodded at him. "YES SERGEANT MAJOR!!" BeachHead closed his pained eyes briefly as he ran off at a snappy pace.

"Stupid greenie.." He turned as he heard huffing breath approaching. "BUYOUR!! Oooogh... gawd." Only iron will kept him from clutching at his splitting head when he made the mistake of shouting. Buyour winced visibly at the noise and came to attention in front of him.

"Sorry I'm late Sergeant major! I had to stop at the infirmary, Sergeant major!"

He narrowed his gaze at her and considered carefully the few memories he held of the night before that involved her. "You delayed your PT because you were HUNG OVER?!" His near shout made him begin to cough, and he turned aside to spit again. "Irresponsible youngsters! Ya'll wanna go party all danged night, and think I'm gonna just let ya all skate by PT the next mornin', don't ya?"

"No Sergeant major!"

He scowled at her for a moment, watching her struggling not to wince. "Drop. Hundred and fifty." She immediately went to the ground and began pumping out her push-ups, counting loudly. "SHUT UP!" He did close his eyes this time, convinced that if he didn't squeeze his eyelids shut, one or both of his eyes would explode. "Gawd.. WHERE THE HECK IS WILLIAMS?!"

"HERE SERGEANT MAJOR!" The shout made him whirl and snatch the hapless greenshirt up by his shirt and shake him. "Stop.. shouting.. at me!" Williams nodded and he turned him loose. Taking the cool bottle of water, he pointed at the ground. "Finish."

He walked away, keeping track of the count for three different sets of exercises. He kicked a clump of grass towards Buyour. "Speed it up girl!" Walked to the back of the group he stretched his arms out and back, trying to get the kinks out of his shoulders. Jaye's cuffs and his trip on Roadblock's shoulder had wrenched his left shoulder fairly nastily. Not that he'd ever admit it to any of them. The main group lept to their feet as they finished the last of the warm-up exercises. "Twenty laps.. and anyone wants to lollygag can double that.. so MOVE it.. erg.." He snarled as his voice disappeared suddenly. Clearing his throat repeatedly and hacking up phlegm finally got it under control. Williams finished the last of his exercises and took off without prompting at least.

Standing over Buyour, he glared at the back of her head as she continued pumping out the push-ups. When she started to gag, he watched dispassionately. At the first retch, he growled. "If'n yer gonna be sick.. go be sick over there!" She struggled to her feet and made it to the edge of the ditch to retch. The instant she stood up, he bellowed at her, ignoring his own pain to inflict worse on the woman. "GET BACK OVER HERE AND FINISH MY DANGED PUSH-UPS GIRLIE! Do you think I'm gonna let it go? Got a upset tummy from all yer danged overindulgin' las' night?"

Wisely, she kept her mouth shut and continued the exercises. By the time she'd finished the twenty laps, the last of the greenshirts were completing the obstacle course run in a huge group for the second time through. He'd told them to make it a group effort, and was fairly pleased with the teamwork.

He stood and glared at the miserable young woman covered in sweat and breathing hard. "Ya gonna live?"

She swallowed and looked him in the eye. "I will if you will."

Just for an instant he was pleased with her spunk in the face of total misery, then he flashed to righteous anger. "YOU GONNA BE SNARKIN' AT ME!? GET YER BUTT ON THAT COURSE AND DO IT NOW!" He chased her bodily out onto the course, and instead of stopping a few steps in, he stayed right behind her, screaming abuse and insults the entire way in her ear as he took obstacles that slowed her down. When she hit the mudpit, he not only kept up plunging thigh deep through the sticky mud, he gave her several shoves into it, yelling until she got back upright.

"Ya got breath to snark! GET UP AND MOVE!! Come on! Ya can't run this thing faster than me? Gonna make comments ya can't back up?! MOVE YER LAZY BUTT!" He climbed out and reached down to grab her by the back of her gear and hauled her bodily out of the muck to deposit her onto her feet. "GO GO GO!"

She scrambled under the tangle of razor wire, paced to one side by him the entire way. When she stumbled across the finish line he was there yelling at her. "YOU CALL THAT RUNNING MY COURSE?! Get back on it NOW!" He ran her back along it the other direction just as fast, pacing her through it again and yelling the entire way.

When he got her back to the start he stopped and stared down at her panting form. "You want to make another snarky comment? GO on.. right now! I wanna hear some snark, right danged now!" She shook her head. "Get outa mah sight!" He waved both arms at the whole group. "ALL OF YA! Get yer danged worthless hides off my course!" They scattered like quail, just as the Joe team members showed up.

Dusty immediately noted BeachHead's bloodshot eyes and ginger movements. "Yo Beach! How're you feeling this morning?" His overly loud question made the drill instructor twitch before he could control it and Dusty grinned. His own head was pounding, but obviously he was in better shape than the instructor THIS morning. When BeachHead turned to glare at him, Dusty lost the grin.

"I'm feeling jus' fine ya pogue.. why don't ya run yerself out to the gate and back ta show me how perky ya feel this mornin'?" Dusty slumped slightly and turned to run and BeachHead whirled on the rest of the group. "YA'LL ALL GET A MOVE ON!!! Follow Dusty to the gate and back! Ya wanna be perky? I'll SHOW YA PERKY!"

Just to prove he wasn't incapable, he chased along behind them the entire way. When they reached the gate and started to turn, he harassed them back out and started them on a run along the fenceline. Once they realized he was going to run them around the entire base, there were a lot of groans and moans. His shouts made him go hoarse again, but at least the long run in the morning heat worked the kinks and cramps out of his muscles. The bruising began to cause him a lot of pain, including a serious one on his right hip. By the time they came back to the gate and turned in, he was hiding a slight limp.

Alpine was hardly hungover at all, and he peered closely at BeachHead as they entered the front gate. "You look like you're limping Sarge.."

He glared at the mountain expert and Alpine jumped to the side slightly, speeding up to put Bazooka between himself and the angry drill instructor. Bazooka, typically, was struggling and wheezing. Bazooka was a constant battle, with BeachHead riding his case nearly constantly to keep him barely passing requirements, and enlisting Doc to keep his weight within range. This morning the hefty man was wheezing like a bellows and staggered to a halt when they reached the PT area again.

BeachHead shivered slightly despite the warm sunlight. The cramps were gone and had been replaced by a body ache that settled into his bones and made him miserable. His splitting head hadn't eased up, despite the fact that he had drained two bottles of water so far. He still had to go report in to Duke this morning and explain his behavior, which would be interesting, seeing as he hadn't much of a clue why he'd even started drinking in the first place.

Looking at the Joe team as they grunted through the PT exercises, he noted that only a few of the drunken group of last night seemed very hungover. He growled under his breath and decided that they could run the obstacle course a few times.. until he felt better about having a hangover while they didn't.

He turned to walk back to the other side of the group and caught a bright flash of light in his eyes and winced away from it. Looking again, he caught Shipwreck just as he lowered the shiny face of his watch to hide it. He felt the vein in his temple begin to throb as he headed over towards the sailor.

Ace watched the Sergeant major berating the sailor at top volume despite the hoarse voice and leaned to Dusty. "I got twenty bucks says he loses his voice completely before we're done with PT."

Dusty reacquired the grin he'd come out with. "Egging allowed?"

Ace grinned back. "You got it, dude."

"I got twenty that says he loses his voice before we hit the obstacle course." Dusty started yelling his push-up count out loudly, and saw BeachHead turned to head for him, since Dusty had added ten to his number deliberately, knowing that Beach despised it when someone tried to sneak a few less push-ups. "Sorry, I was only off by a few, Beach! What's the big deal!?"

He smiled to himself as the eyes narrowed. The yelling started up loud and got louder. He was already planning the next bit of needling, he wanted that twenty bucks.

* * * *

End chapter:

Tormenting hungover drill instructor.. just not a great idea. Buyour learned that. Hungover and miserable, he'll still run you into the ground. Next chapter.. BeachHead finally gets to learn what sort of fallout and sanctions he's got to face.


	7. Chapter 7

Chap 7

Annnd... finally they find out what REALLY made him drink...

* * * *

Duke sat behind his desk, and listened to the extremely remorseful greenshirt pouring out his confession in front of him. "Soo.. let me get this straight.." He glared at the Mouth. "You went out.. got drunk with everyone.. then when you saw BeachHead coming to give you guys a ride back to base.. you decided it was a good idea to DRUG him."

"It's herbal.. I thought... well, I was drunk, but I thought it was just loosen him up. Not that it would make him drink half the alcohol in town." Mouth ducked his head. "I'm sorry sir.. really. I wouldn't have given Sergeant major something like this to make him get into trouble." He seemed extremely upset.

Duke leaned over his desk. "Really? Then when were you going to TELL me about it? I heard about it from Dusty and then Shipwreck, before you came in here."

Mouth shifted his weight foot to foot. "I.. I came in as soon as I could stop throwing up, sir. I get really sick after drinking." He looked anywhere but at Duke and his neck got red. "I'm sort of.. you know.. a lightweight. I usually don't drink very much."

"Well, BeachHead usually doesn't drink on duty at all, but thanks to you and your little 'herbal' remedy, his record is going to have a heck of a large black mark smeared all over it. Thanks to your wonderful judgment call, he's got to go apologize to half a dozen people, INCLUDING LadyJaye. He's got enough things from his involuntary adventures last night for Hawk to bust him down to private.. no no.. scratch that.. he could be busted to a GREENSHIRT PRIVATE! Would you like that? Like him busted down to below even YOUR level?" Duke's near shouting made the young man wince repeatedly.

"No sir! You can't DO that to Sergeant major!" Mouth shook his head frantically. "You just CAN'T! Tell Hawk.. tell him that I'll take whatever punishment he wants to give me.. I'll take Sergeant major's punishment.. he can kick me out of the program.. kick me out of the ARMY! But you can't bust Sergeant major down to private! Not no how! That's not fair!"

Duke leaned back in his chair. "No, it's not fair, but that's the rules. Your actions have very very severe consequences for the man. He's out running the PT classes with the mother of all hangovers. Once he's done with that, he'll go see Doc, then he goes before Hawk to find out what sort of punishment he's going to go through, and what sort of sanctions we'll have to take against him."

Mouth seemed to shrink in one himself. "I'm sorry. Isn't there anything I can do?"

The pale blue eyes narrowed. "No, the only thing you could have done, was use better judgment. Now it's too late. Go do whatever you're supposed to be doing. I'll call for you when we want you."

Mouth slunk out of the office and Duke sighed heavily. He'd be willing to bet that any punishment they meted out to the Mouth would pale in comparison to how much he'd beat himself up for dragging BeachHead into this situation. Sometimes his job and the regulations that went along with it really really sucked.

* * * *

Author's Note: I REALLY wanted to stop here to make you sweat it out for another day.. but I decided not to. So.. here's the rest of the debriefing...

* * * *

When the Sergeant major finally dragged into Hawk's office, he looked like death warmed over and put through a blender. "Sir.. sir." His subdued greeting to both of them was much quieter than his normal boisterous voice. "I'd like to state right up front.. I'm very very sorry about last night. I don't.. uhh.. I don't know what would have possessed me to.. to have even one drink.. I don't remember deciding to drink.." His gaze stayed fastened on the floor.

Duke shook his head. "You didn't. Someone slipped you a mickey, and that's why you felt drunk, and then you were given alcohol, when you were already under the influence of the drug, which acerbated the effects. So.. mostly this wasn't your fault to begin with. However.."

BeachHead's face had gotten more set with every word. "What? Who slipped me a drug?"

Duke looked at Hawk carefully. "That doesn't matter. What matters is that you won't be subject to a full accounting of your actions, since you were drugged against your will. You have racked up an amazing number of offenses.. and Hawk and I have decided that cleaning detail, KP duties and guard duty will serve as appropriate punishments since it would be useless to assign you extra PT as a punishment.. You will receive no sanctions or reduction in rank, although you will be considered to be on probationary status and if it happens again in the next year, you will receive a full series of sanctions for both incidents. Frankly.. if it happens again, I'm not sure there IS a low enough rank in the US Army for where you'll end up. But then, I don't think there's much chance of a reoccurrence of this from you."

BeachHead shook his head gingerly. "No sir, las' time I got drunk was when I got outa Basic. I don't generally do that."

Hawk leaned forward slightly. "BeachHead.. you'll have a lot of apologizing to do to teammates. LadyJaye especially, who could file sexual harassment if she was so minded.. and Lifeline who has a black eye.. and Roadblock who swears he still smells like the garbage bin you locked him in. SnakeEyes.. well.. okay, he probably enjoyed getting to completely flummox the local police and seemed disappointed that he didn't get to try to capture you, but still. You won't get to apologize to the townspeople, as I don't want you to even LOOK towards town. In fact.. you'll stay away from the gates.. no running the outer fenceline." He paused. "And you get to apologize.. sincerely, to Warrant Officer Flint." He watched the man wince. "Yes, you have to, and you should want to. Not only did you put him through a hellish night on duty, but he had to cover your duties as well, and then for his troubles, you headbutted him."

"Yes sir." BeachHead could not possibly have looked more miserable than he did right at that moment.

"You're getting off easy."

"Yes sir."

Hawk nodded at Duke who took a deep breath. "Okay then. One month on clean-up detail, one month on guard duty, not to be served at the outer gates, two months on KP duty, please try not to set the kitchen on fire this time.. and full apologies to all involved parties. You'll also have your pay docked to pay for all the expenses from the damage you did and I'm docking your pay to cover the rather extensive bar tab that the whole group left behind."

"Yes sir."

"Go on then. Punishment detail begins tomorrow." The sergeant trudged out and Hawk sighed. Duke looked at him. "I'm going to schedule Mouth to serve KP on the opposite schedule as Beach as best I can. And I'll try to keep a tight hold on everything until it all cools off." Hawk nodded. "Anything else?"

"No, hopefully we'll have some quiet days, without any excitement or drama for a while." Hawk seemed to almost believe that was possible.

Duke tried to summon up some optimism. "Let's hope so, sir."

* * * *

BeachHead slunk into the motorpool carrying two bagged lunches with him. He'd decided to indulge in having lunch with his favorite tank jockey, since she was supposed to be in the midst of a major repair on one of the MOBAT tanks. She'd work through lunch, and end up eating a late dinner to boot so he had picked up sandwiches to share with her.

He'd just spent the remainder of his morning after PT making his rounds to apologize. Roadblock had been on his way to his bunk after staying up to supervise the breakfast and lunch prep. He'd been jovial about the whole thing. Lifeline and Flint were both still sleeping, so he'd have to run them to ground later on. LadyJaye had been annoyingly belligerent over his apology, and insisted on telling him extreme detail about every single thing he'd done. He stood through all of it, looking hangdog and ashamed and apologized after every item. At some point, she finally decided he'd had enough and was sincerely about to implode on himself. So she had patted his cheek and said she forgave him, and then leered at him and said he had a very nice gun in his pants, just to make him turn a new level of red.

Sighing, he put the bags on the mostly cleared off work bench. "CoverGirl?" Clutch was in the messhall, so other than a possible stray greenshirt assistant or two, the girl should be the only one here. Soft clanking led him to the back where the MOBAT's innards were scatter across the floor. "CoverGirl.. hey I brought you lunch."

Her wrench came flinging out towards him at about knee level and he put a foot up to block it and stepped on it to pin it to the floor. Bending over, he plucked it up off the floor. "Hey, you flinging wrenches already at the tank? It that bad?" The second one thunked into his head just over his left ear. "OW!! Gol' dang it!! Watch where yer throwin' those things!" He rubbed his head as she rolled out from under the propped up edge of the tank treads.

"Oh, I watched. It went right where I aimed it. Get out!" Her angry voice made him frown. "You can just take you, and your lunch out of my garage!"

"What? What'd I do? I just got here, I brought you lunch..."

"I don't WANT your lunch! And I don't want YOU here! You big lecherous JERK! You stupid hillbilly!" She snatched up a handful of sockets and flung those at him, making him cringe away, covering his head. "How dare you come walking in here! Acting like you weren't ALLLLL over Jaye last night! Oh no.. now you wanna come waltzing in for your second helping of fun?"

He held up his hands to forestall another attack from her. "Whoa whoa.. whooooa. Let me explain.. not my fault.. some idiot slipped me a mickey.. they drugged me.. I wasn't in my right mind! I would NEVER be harassing Jaye otherwise! You know that."

"Right right.. RIGHT! Because you weren't oogling her in PT were you.. noooo.. she had this morning's PT OFF! You let her OFF PT!!" She swung a wrench at his head which he blocked and grabbed to twist out of her hand and toss onto the nearby workbench. "How could you DO that!?"

"I didn't LET her off PT! I don't LET anyone off PT! I was out there, and I was hungover! She was on NIGHT SHIFT for Gawd's SAKE! Night shift doesn't have PT until late afternoon!"

"Oh like I'm going to let it go that you were pawing all over her, just because she was the one on night shift? What? Didn't you 'complete your night maneuvers' with her? Or were you coming to ask ME about that? Get warmed up on the Jaye-Jaye, finish up with the Barbiedoll?" She stood with her arms crossed, huffing angrily.

He sighed at her. "I did nothing of the kind. I was drunk off my butt, and I pawed at her.. and if it had been you there, I probably would have done way more."

She seemed to soften slightly at that admission, which made NO sense to Beach, but he'd go with whatever worked. "You're just saying that."

"Nooo. If you had been the one buckling a seat belt on me.. I would have gone nuts.. I would have been necking with you like it was going outa style.. right there in front of everyone." Bingo, he saw the smile playing around the edges of those perfect lips. "I'm glad it wasn't you there last night." Right on cue, the hard lines came back as her anger flashed to the forefront.

"What's THAT supposed to mean?" She narrowed her eyes as he stepped closer to her to look at her out of sincere brown eyes, albeit reddened and bloodshot from the rough night.

"I wouldn't have wanted you there.. because I wouldn't want our first real kiss to happen with me drugged up and not able to appreciate and remember every last millisecond of the experience.." He smiled at her and saw her lips part and her eyes go moist and soft and gentle. Inwardly he was shrieking with glee that it had come out right, and he hadn't screwed it up majorly as he normally did.

"Oh Beach... that's... " She stepped up close and smiled up into his face. "That's... " He totally never saw the knee coming at his crouch and doubled over in intense pain. "That's just about the biggest line of bull puckey I ever heard coming out of your mouth. Nice try Ranger man. You're in the dog house until further notice." She bent over to smile at his pained expression. "I like chocolates and muscle car magazines. No flowers." He nodded. "Now leave... and leave my lunch too, you better have remembered a dessert."

He nodded again and straightened up slowly. His strained voice was pretty low. "I did... I did.." He limped to the door. "See you at dinner?"

"Yep. Seven-thirty?"

"Yeah.. that's good.." He started to step out of the door and she cleared her throat.

"If I see you even glance at Jaye.. you'll wish you were a eunuch. I promise." Her hard gaze made him shiver slightly and begin to reconsider the idea of breaking frat rules at all. Then her face tilted to the side and she smiled sweetly. "And I like fancy teas."

He nodded slowly, trying to process how she could be outright terrifying one second and downright adorable the next. "Okay, I'll remember. Anything else?"

"Nope. Have a good afternoon." She sauntered back to her torn apart MOBAT in a casual manner as he headed back down into the Pit, hoping that he would manage to get back to his quarters without puking. At least if he did puke, he hadn't had lunch yet. And he'd still need to do his apology to Flint.. his day just got better and better. If he ever found out who'd drugged him, Hawk probably would bust him down to private for what he'd do to them.

The only good part of the last twenty-four hours was getting to run the nine hungover team members through a murderous PT course. It would have been much more fun if first, he hadn't been nursing the worst hangover in the history of hangovers himself, and second, if everyone on the team hadn't known explicitly how badly he was hung over. Every time he voiced anything, they'd enthusiastically answered him at top volume with "Yes Sergeant major BeachHead!" By the time he'd turned them loose, he was contemplating bashing his head with a ballpeen hammer until he stopped feeling anything.

Enough mental whining. Time to go suck it up and limp his way to find Flint and apologize to him.. and watch him smirk and act smug for the next six months. He sighed to himself. Some days.. it just didn't pay to get out of bed.

* * * *

End Chapter:

Only one more chapter so you can see Beach performing his punishment details.. then it's done.


	8. Chapter 8

Chap 8

FINAL CHAPTER!! Yes, I'm sorry, but this will be the finish. It's been a fun ride!

For those that asked about the harshness of the punishments, remember that he STILL did drink, run amok, and call the officer on duty names, PLUS assaulted civilians, PLUS assaulted four Joes(one of them an officer). He would have to have severe punishment as an example if nothing else, or other Joes(cough-Ship, Clutch, etc-cough) might try to claim their own poor behavior after over-indulging was due to being slipped a mickey as well.

As far as the harshness.. it's not so bad, menial labor. By all rights he should have been busted in rank, or even discharged. Plus, everyone involved should be guilty enough over their part in it to not slip any drugs to any other unsuspecting Joes. Lessons learned all the way around. So now we know... and Knowing Is Half the Battle!

* * * *

BeachHead stared down the hallway at the office door. He twisted his lips in distaste, thinking up about fifty excuses why he shouldn't go down to that door. He'd already used up half a dozen during the day so far. He even walked past the door twice. He took two steps towards it and stopped, feeling foolish.

"Aww.. hell." He strode down the hallway with his head down and pushed the door open. "Flint.. you got a minute?"

The warrant officer looked up from a file he'd been working on. "That depends.. will I get head-butted if I say no?"

"Geez.. you ain't gonna make this easy, are ya?" Beach sighed. "I'm sorry I head-butted ya. Frankly I'm surprised ya let me, cause yer not normally that careless."

"Yeah.. careless to trust my command sergeant major to not try to knock me out without warning. Foolish me." Flint's eyes narrowed. "I didn't expect that I couldn't trust you to go into town and not get roaring drunk and run amok all over town."

BeachHead huffed out an exasperated breath. "I know I know. Wasn't all my fault.."

Flint interrupted. "Oh.. yess.. blame me for sending you out. That's real mature. You're supposed to be on call at all times if you're on base, so don't stand there and try to blame me for sending you out.."

The Sergeant major snorted loudly. "Good gawd, shut up." He looked up at the ceiling before he continued. "I ain't blamin' you. Some smartbutt slipped me a mickey at the bar when I went to pick them up. That's what made me drunk to begin with, and then it went downhill. I was drugged.. not that it excuses everything I done.. but dang it.. I didn't go into town and suddenly decide to throw my whole danged career down the tubes for a few drinks."

"Well.. you.. they.." Flint was stymied as to how to respond. "I still want an apology!"

BeachHead reached up and pulled the balaclava off and ran a hand through his unruly hair. "Fine. I'm sorry." Flint snorted and Beach looked away and threw his hands up. "What do ya want? I'm sorry I acted the fool, there's a reason I don't ever drink. I'm sorry I called ya names over the comm line and I'm sorry I head-butted ya." He sighed at the sour look the shorter man gave him. "What do you want from me? You want me on my danged knees in front of the whole Pit?"

Flint gave him a disbelieving look. "You would do that?"

"Hell no."

The warrant officer sighed. "Well.. I wouldn't let you do it even if you were offering. It would undermine your authority, and the last thing I need is to spend any extra time backing you up with the Joes or greens." He sat there a second. "There is the whole issue with you feeling up my.. uhh.. I mean.. harassing LadyJaye."

BeachHead felt the blush spread up his neck and looked at the edge of the desk. "Naw.. there isn't any issue. I done gone and gotten chewed out by her, thanks. And I didn't feel her up.. I was handcuffed fer gawd's sake."

Flint stared at him somberly. "You licked her."

Looking appalled, the Ranger stammered a bit. "Oh.. y-you... uhhh... talked to her about it." Beach sighed. "So.. you wanna punch me in the eye or something?" Flint stared at him. "I'll let ya. I deserve it, and if it'll make ya feel better to take a poke at me, go ahead and do it."

Heaving a sigh, Flint put his elbows up on his desk. "Well.. now I really can't. If you're going to go being all noble and offering to let me punch you.. it sort of takes all of the fun out of it. As far as the rest.. what kind of punishment detail did Duke assign you?"

BeachHead tilted his head back and rattled off the list. "Kitchen duty four days a week, cleaning duty three days a week, guard duty three days a week, and I can't go near the outer gates, including on guard duty, so my guard schedule will be indoor stations. No reduction in rank, I'm on probation for.... forever. And my pay is docked to pay for everything." He thought for a second. "Aside from havin' to apologize to everyone involved.. I think that's it."

Flint hummed. "I guess that's enough. I don't imagine that assigning you extra PT duty would work very well, now would it?" Beach grinned. "Yeah.. didn't think so. Just to let you know though.. I better not see you ever look at Jaye.." He saw him wince visibly. "What? What was that?"

"Trust me.. I ain't gonna be able to look at her for a while." BeachHead sighed. "We good? I don't wanna have no long drawn out war with you over this."

Flint scowled. "Like you're really upset that you spent the entire night calling me names and telling me off in front of half of the night shift?"

Now the sergeant shifted uncomfortably. "Look Flint.. sir. You and me, we butt heads. Ain't no doubt about that, and we'll keep buttin' heads. But you can't say that I ever done nothing to undermine yer authority with the troops. I've always respected the station, if not the person. So don't go saying I would've gone and done all this sober."

"Alright. Fair enough. Don't think I'm not going to enjoy every moment of your punishment.. because I am. Every second. Every nanosecond. I might make copies of the security tapes of you mopping the floors." Flint smirked as Beach tugged his balaclava back on over his head.

He turned his back on the warrant officer and opened up the door. At the last second he turned and glanced back at him. "Oh... since you mentioned it.. I got copies of all the communications from last night.. jus' so you know. For posterity.. let's say. If I gotta get punished for doin' it, I might as well know what all I said."

Flint scowled as the door clicked shut quietly behind the broad back. Somehow even though BeachHead was going to have months of punishment details, and humiliating punishment too.. somehow he felt like he'd been cheated out of coming out on top in the conflict between the two of them. Again.

* * * *

BeachHead felt his eyelid twitch and forced himself to remain calm. Mopping floors wasn't that bad. Even scrubbing tiles with a hand brush wasn't too humiliating. After all, he never minded getting dirty to contribute to the base cleanliness. He'd happily scrub toilets as part of his probation. And had. He sighed.

After he ran PT sessions in the morning, he would spend two full hours scrubbing floors, whether it was mopping or on his hands and knees scrubbing the grout with a small brush. Back-breaking work that he'd happily assigned to many a miscreant that had crossed him. The other Joe's seemed mostly delighted to find the feared Sergeant major on cleaning detail, and Ripcord seemed intent on walking on every floor he mopped just when he was one foot away from finishing it. The fourth time he'd watched the paratrooper stroll across his newly mopped floors while smirking, he'd 'accidentally' swung the mop head into Ripcord's ankle and tripped him headfirst into his bucket of dirty mopwater. The resulting mess took him thirty minutes to clean up, but he'd smiled the entire time. Ripcord had taken the hint, and made himself scarce.

The greenshirts were torn between being horrified their instructor had been assigned to grunt duty, and delighted that they couldn't be held responsible. Of course, Mouth had landed in hot water with Duke over something or other. The young man ended up spending a great deal of time working somewhere nearby BeachHead.. doing a similar job separately. He seemed to be pretty ashamed of his actions in getting himself drunk and rowdy while out the other night, as he kept his head low and stayed quiet, even during PT and training. Beach wondered what he'd done to ticc off Duke so badly, other than getting so drunk. After all, he'd only gotten drunk off-duty, when it should be more or less allowable, and as far as Beach knew, he hadn't started any fights or done any amount of damage to the bar. Duke just glared when Beach asked, and then gave him an additional week of guard duty when he'd insisted he had a right to know what HIS greenshirt had done to merit punishment. Wisely, the sergeant major had dropped the issue.

Flint had delighted in happening along every time he was busy scrubbing bathrooms, mopping floors, or wiping down the five hundred and seventeen doors that had smooth finish paint that showed fingerprints... again. He wandered through the meal line in the messhall every time Beach was on the serving line dishing out food, and inspected the kitchen every time he was sitting and peeling ANOTHER five hundred potatoes.

Shipwreck and Footloose were often in the kitchen on KP duty as well, although they were usually on the cooking line, being able to actually make edible food without destroying the kitchen in the process. Shipwreck had backed BeachHead up when he'd warned Chef about himself.. but thoroughly enjoyed the resulting mess and had often been heard regaling the other Joes with the story of how Beach's level of sheer ineptitude had managed to make Chef bang his head on the counter in frustration.

KP duty wasn't something he enjoyed per se.. but he didn't particularly mind it. After the new head cook, 'Chef' had gone through every single one of the cooking duties for lunch, and found out that BeachHead could indeed screw up making a peanut butter sandwich if left to his own devices, he'd been put on pot scrubbing and potato peeling detail.. like he'd told the guy in the first place. He had been explicit in his warning that he had NO food talents, including not being able to beat eggs properly, and that he'd once burned water attempting to boil noodles for Roadblock, UNDER CLOSE SUPERVISION.

But Chef didn't think anyone could be THAT bad, so had immediately put him to searing beef. He'd been moved to boiling carrots when the beef had begun to stick to the griddle surface and turn purplish in color. He'd had the pot of carrots taken away when those turned gray and started to foam their way out of the pot, and been handed a pitcher of batter to make hushpuppies in the deep fryer. He didn't really want to think about the disaster THAT had turned into. Suffice it to say that he'd be cleaning out the oven's vent hood after the dinner services were done and Lifeline needed some practice treating grease burns anyway. Once he'd managed to make a rather large container of wallpaper paste, he'd been removed from pasta duty and put to scrubbing the pots and pans.

Mouthing off to the secondary cook had sent him away from the sinks and landed him in the corner of the kitchen with a paring knife and several fifty pound bags of potatoes. In his mind, they could have saved a lot of time, food, and aggravation had they listened to him in the first place and put him here to begin with. Of course, he was on KP punishment detail, so he had to do whatever Chef as the head cook told him to do, no matter how much of a certain disaster it was doomed to be.

No, he'd happily spend hours out of every one of his busy days cleaning, scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, peeling potatoes or scrubbing greasy pots.. anything.. as long as it wasn't guard duty. Not that he minded gate guard duty.. at least he could check people in and out, inspect vehicles entering, watch vultures circling in the desert.. watch the feeble bits of grass growing even.

But no.. Hawk had specifically forbidden him to have any guard duty on the fenceline, or anywhere up top where he could be spotted by a civilian. He understood why. Right now, the townspeople couldn't finger the man who'd caused such a huge amount of disturbance and damage. As far as they could prove, it wasn't even a member of the military. They just didn't have much proof of anything, other than the bartender, who didn't have much concrete identification, but at least could have been reasonably certain he came from the nearby base, since he'd arrived to pick up the group of soldiers. As long as he stayed out of sight, then no one would recognize him, and memories would fade, the incident would be forgotten and life would go on.

But standing guard on a doorway in a blank hallway in the bowels of the Pit.. on a door no one wanted to enter anyway, as it was just the entrance to the computer servers... it was so mind-numbingly boring and useless that he was ready to scream and tear someone's throat out. But it was a punishment detail. It wasn't supposed to be fun. His eyelid twitched again and he willed himself to stillness once more. He'd stand here for four excruciating hours.. three times a week. Didn't matter whether it was morning or evening, since there were no windows or even a clock to look at. The lighting was fairly dim, due to the unused nature of the area. Sure, the servers would be something that an intruder would want to get at... once they made it down eight levels filled with security and Joes and cameras... He sighed heavily and twisted his neck to pop it and settled back into place.

He felt Mouth looking at him. He decided to ignore it. The greenshirt had been assigned as the second guard on the door somehow and had to stand there about five feet away for the same four long hours. For some reason unknown to him, the danged greenshirt looked guilty every single shift they served on the stupid doorway. They didn't talk, just stood there. The one time Mouth had started to drum up a conversation, BeachHead ignored him until finally turning and informed him that guarding didn't mean getting distracted by idle chatter. It wasn't so much that BeachHead really thought that two guards standing at a useless post where you'd see someone coming with enough time to finish a hand of cards, get your battle armor fastened, load your weapons and stand up BEFORE the guy would finish running up the long empty corridor to get to you.. couldn't talk to pass the time. But he really didn't feel like chatting with one of his greenshirts, especially not while he was on punishment duty with the kid.

There he went again, staring at him. He turned his head to glare and Mouth snapped back to proper attention, face forward, back straight and arms down. He settled back into his own guard stance and tried not to fall asleep standing up. He'd happily sit next to a little used trail in the hellish Amazon jungle for twenty-four hours to catch a possible terrorist.. bugs eating him alive, sweating until he approached dehydration, flirting with heat exhaustion.. anything but this boring standing and doing NOTHING.

Something seemed to flicker down the hallway and he glanced to look. Nothing. The same nothing as the previous five thousand hours of nothing. He was going mad listening to the fluorescent lights humming at this point. He caught himself counting how many breaths per minute Mouth took and figured out how many breaths the man would miss in the time it would take him to strangle him to death if he used a garrote versus his bare hands. Wire garrotes were the best, he liked this braided wire, normally used for hanging picture frames of all things..

He turned his head to stare down the hallway again. Maybe he was beginning to see things. His gaze flicked to Mouth for an instant, but he didn't seem to have seen anything. After he carefully searched every inch of the hallway visually, he unfocused his gaze and relaxed his brain, letting it idle and immediately fastened on a certain spot on the ceiling next to the exposed conduit pipes. The shape that stood out suddenly to him didn't look like anything, much less a person.. but it hadn't been there earlier.

Keeping his eyes fixed on the shape, he unslung his rifle and headed down the hallway. "Stay put.. guard the door!" When he saw the shape move he broke into a full out run, aiming the rifle and yelling. "Get down from there! Hands where I can see 'em! NOW NOW!!" He triggered his comm unit and alerted Breaker of the intruder just as the shape twisted into a person and dropped to the corridor in a kneeling position. "DANG IT!!! Kamakura!! I oughta put a danged bullet in ya fer being STUPID!"

Beach looked up the hall at Mouth who at least had followed procedure and stayed on post, watching both the opposite end of the hall and BeachHead's intruder, rifle held at the ready. "Stand down, it's friendly." He kicked Kamakura in the side lightly with one boot. "Get yerself up, stupid sneaking spook trainee. I should put a bullet in Snakes.. he sent you down here as a test didn't he? Using me to train his danged apprentices again..." A sudden thought occurred to him and he twisted and yelled at Mouth. "WATCH FER JINX!! Where there's one.."

The second smaller shape dropped off the ceiling right over his head and landed lightly on his rifle with both feet. He held onto it by sheer willpower as the slightly built girl crouched in front of his face. "Get. Off. Mah. Rifle." She flipped backwards and landed on the balls of her feet. "Very funny, you little show-off. You ain't gettin' full points fer sneakin'. I knew you were somewhere nearby."

"No, you GUESSED correctly that I was somewhere nearby, and I didn't fancy having Duke all angry when your trigger happy greenshirt over there put a couple bullets through the power line conduits when he thought he spotted the boogeyman." He narrowed his eyes and she shrank just enough that he could tell. "Sorry Sergeant major, we were training, Sergeant major."

"I'm puttin' ya on report.. both of ya. And.. I'm tellin' Snakes I caught ya in sneaky mode. Let him deal with some punishments fer ya both." Since they both looked rather crestfallen at the idea of their sensei hearing how they'd been spotted, he felt a bit more satisfied. "Go on.. git." He walked back up to the doorway, slinging his rifle back over his shoulder and carefully stationing himself back in place to settle to stillness.

Mouth was already in position again and glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Well... that was exciting."

"Shut up."

"Yes, Sergeant major."

BeachHead sighed and felt his eyelid twitch again. Only three more hours to go for today. If he ever found out who'd decided to slip him a mickey and get him into this mess to begin with.. his fists clenched and a grin spread over his face under the balaclava. He spent the next few hours contemplating everything he'd do to them. Mouth heard the occasional low growl rumble in the other man's chest and inched slightly further away. Any desire to confess his guilt to the Sergeant major and clear his conscience died on his tongue. After all, he wanted to live.

* * * *

END FINIS DONE.

I hope you've all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. It really was a great fic to write, and yes, if I didn't DO most of the things Beach did, I've WITNESSED most of them done by others. Especially the whole "arguing with inanimate objects" which I've done, and with a quick poll of people that I know drink, the results were 17 of 18 admitted to having an argument with an inanimate object while drunk. The one person who said they did not remember ever doing so, admitted that he often has those arguments while stone cold sober.

I'll be writing something new soon, and yes, still working on the other fics in progress, I haven't forgotten! If you have any comments or questions, feel free to review or PM me. As always.. THANK YOU for reading! Thanks to all the great reviewers who told me how much they enjoyed it! *BOWS*


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